THE OLD GOLD OF SHARMILA TAGORE

Sharmila Tagore's comeback in a Bengali film after 14 years does not have just Bengalis cheering. Puratawn had its first private screening in Delhi NCR at the intimate setting of Gurugram's Museo Camera this weekend.

- PARAMITA GHOSH

PRIM and proper Mrs Sen has two house guests. Her beloved daughter Mamoni and her son-in-law have come to celebrate her 80th birthday, but what tumbles out are family secrets -- an unravelling marriage and a troubled mother-daughter relationship marked by physical distance and old age. Veteran actor Sharmila Tagore's moving performance as Mrs Sen in Puratawn (The Ancient), directed by Sumon Ghosh, had its first private screening in Delhi NCR before a select gathering in the intimate space of Gurugram's Museo Camera Centre for the Photographic Arts on Sunday.

Tagore looked elegant in a black outfit and stole the show at the event. Rituparna Sengupta, the film's producer, who also plays Mrs Sen's daughter Mamoni, was resplendent in a white sari. Tagore's cousins, cinema critic Shohini Ghosh, former chief information commissioner of India Wajhat Habibullah, and Diana Mickeviciene, the Lithuanian Ambassador to India, were in the audience.

Fronts in this film. What made me do it was the name Sharmila Tagore. She said, 'I am doing a film in my language after so many years...' It was such a personal confession.