Bhabantara: A fascinating story about love & marriage

Anant Mahapatra's just-released film Bhabantara (The Heart's Desires) is an emotionally deep and cinematically accomplished story that explores the power of human passion to create and to destroy.

- CHANDRAHAS CHOUDHURY

Based on the story Pabitra Papa by the writer Ajay Mohapatra, Bhabantara is dominated by the sentiments and struggles of a female protagonist: the beautiful new bride Srabani, played with a compelling intensity by the young actress Suryamayee Mohapatra. In the film's opening scene, Srabani appears veiled by the pallu of her sari, being led into her bridal chamber by a female family member. But as soon as Srabani is left alone, she flings the pallu off her head - Mahapatra cuts to the flame guttering and nearly blowing out - before grudgingly putting it on again. A passionate tumult already visible in her nature has risen to the surface, observed only by the camera. When her husband Sritam (Abhishek Giri) arrives, he reaches out to raise his young bride's face towards his own. It is only now that we hear the first words of dialogue in the film, sudden and shocking.

"Don't touch me!"

Srabani reveals to Sritam that shortly before their marriage was decided by their respective parents, she had met an attractive man, Milan (Saroj Nanda), at a party while visiting her older sister in Kolkata. We cut to the past. Sparks fly between the couple as, having left the rest of the company behind, they stand together gazing at the moon in the night sky, speaking to one another in riddles. Mahapatra's very artistic depiction of their affair, in a sequence last no more than a couple of minutes, is one of the highlights of the film. The sense of ecstatic connection he manages to summon between man and woman is key to persuading us of the integrity, such as it is, of Srabani's stance not just on her wedding night but for the rest of her days.