Our Idiot Brother Movie Review

Yes, there’s the saying, “nice guys finish last,” and that’s certainly the case for Our Idiot Brother‘s Ned (Paul Rudd) quite often, but when you’re considering movies, nice movies can get a bit of a boost even when they don’t entirely deserve it. Our Idiot Brother is undoubtedly flawed, but director Jesse Peretz turns up the charm with ease, bringing the best out of his talented cast and some impressively honest, humorous and heartwarming dialogue to overshadow nearly every fault.

Ned is, well, Miranda, Liz and Natalie’s (Elizabeth Banks, Emily Mortimer and Zooey Deschanel) idiot brother. Perhaps the term “idiot” is a bit harsh; Ned is just incredibly peppy and a bit too trusting. Then again, most would call a guy who opts to appease a uniformed cop looking for some weed an idiot. After serving eight months in prison, Ned is released, turned away by his girlfriend and denied ownership of his beloved dog, Willie Nelson.

With no job, no home and a criminal record, Ned turns to his family for support. Everyone welcomes him with open arms, beginning with his mother. However, Ned’s happy-go-lucky ways have the tendency to get him in trouble, forcing each of his sisters to eventually kick him to the curb and send him onto the next.

Our Idiot Brother straddles the line between character piece and ensemble film. The opening scene is absolutely perfect. We meet a friendly, loving and, unfortunately, too understanding Ned who hands over some rhubarb and a bag of weed to an officer who claims to be desperately in need of a high. Sure, it was a dumb move, but the scene solidifies Ned as the victim, earning your sympathy within minutes. Post-title card it’s rubbed in a bit more as Ned heads back home to his biodynamic farm and girlfriend, Janet (Kathryn Hahn), to find that she’s shacking up with another man, Billy (TJ Miller). While these subsequent moments aren’t nearly as tight as the initial introduction, Janet and Billy make for amusing oppositions.

From then on, Our Idiot Brother is an ensemble film and the adjustment can be a bit jarring. This portion of the piece is just as enjoyable, it just takes a little time to switch gears and spread your attention to a group rather than just giving it all to our main man. However, the well-established family dynamic certainly eases the transition.

Each of Ned’s sisters rocks a stereotype; Miranda is the grueling workaholic, Liz the hovering mother and Natalie the more free-spirited of the bunch. Not only do each present engaging solo situations, but the relationship between the three is impressively authentic. Plus, each has a unique connection to Ned. The variety creates a multi-dimensional depiction of the family that really makes you feel like you’re part of the bunch, rather than someone in a theater getting a fleeting peek into their lives. The only one that gets thrown to the wayside is the mother, Ilene (Shirley Knight). While she is the one to catch Ned when he falls just after getting out of jail, once he makes his way to his sisters, Ilene is completely forgotten until well into the film and, even when she is re-introduced, her impact is minimal.

This isn’t much of an issue as Ned’s sisterly trio offers more than enough idiosyncrasies to keep you entertained. There are a handful of particularly amusing moments involving Liz’s son, River (Matthew Mindler), the best of which comes during a private school interview. Banks is superb as the snippy magazine writer desperate for a big scoop, as she manages to earn some sympathy even while resorting to some dishonest tactics. Natalie is probably the least interesting of the three, as her predicament isn’t presented in as profound a fashion as it deserves and partially because she’s slapped together with a tactlessly dressed girlfriend. (Rashida Jones).

Our Idiot Brother also comes with a few believability issues, either because something is just downright impossible or because it’s not backed with enough information. Liz and Dave’s (Steve Coogan) relationship isn’t established well enough to make Dave’s mean streak passable in the least and everyone’s eagerness to just blame Ned becomes a bit too predictable. The film is also lacking in transitions, bopping from sister to sister to Ned and back again with abandon. Oh, and nobody would ever allow a child, let alone a dog, to visit a man in prison.

Sure, when you think about it, these problems could be off-putting, but Our Idiot Brother is so well paced and the humor ever flowing that you won’t have the chance to think twice about anything – at least until after the credits. This is certainly a film about a dysfunctional family, but, even when they’re at their worst, this is a group that’s particularly pleasant to spend time with, especially Ned.

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Movie Review - Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark

This much-anticipated Guillermo del Toro-penned remake is a project you really want to like. But…

…the end result, as co-scripted by Matthew Robbins and directed by Troy Nixey, eventually wastes all the benefits of all the doubts you may have given it. To be clear, I’m not one who doubted this new Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark from the get-go, who felt it inherently doomed for taking a 1970’s lo-fi classic and giving it a slick CGI-polish for today’s audiences. That would almost be too easy, and certainly would too deeply discount Del Toro’s contributions—anyone recall how he gave new life to the Blade franchise? Indeed, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is a property that could have benefited from amplification of some sort, especially the gaslit backstory that helps explain how its ageless little monsters came to reside in the particular house in which we now find them.

As luck would have it, this is exactly where the film really excels: the first few minutes. From the opening shot on, Nixey shows such skill working with the period elements—he crafts scenes that are atmospheric and visceral at the same time—that you’re utterly transported. The horror elements thus come across as original, mysterious, ominous… and yes, therefore powerful.

But then, following the title sequence, all of that power slowly dissipates like an air mattress with a tiny, but ultimately fatal pinprick. Indeed, you might not notice all the deflation until well into the second act—that promising opening, plus the level of talent involved keeps expectations moderately high. In fact, if you’re like me you might almost feel guilty for noticing the things that don’t work. A prime example is the whisperings of the little critters; they’re not only not scary, but actually kind of laughable and then, sadly, even irritating. I kept thinking, “Maybe it’s just me. Maybe others will be creeped out by this kind of stuff.” But, no, let’s be honest... few general audiences are apt to be consistently frightened by this film, and horror audiences are even less likely to be moved. In the end, it probably would have been better to conceive and position this Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark as a PG-13 outing straight down the line: a creature-driven haunted house flick for ten-year-olds but with enough wit, style, and surprises to make happy the grownups who buy the tickets.

Yet instead of sly humor, plot twists, and new takes on old tropes, the filmmakers have played things very conventionally, and the result is a film that takes itself very seriously...but doesn't take the horror fan particularly seriously—not the kind of fan, that is, who's like Del Toro himself, someone who knows the genre inside-out. Thus we get a bathroom sequence that seems poised on the edge of doing something original with this frequently-used horror movie setting… and then doesn’t. We also get an absurdly staged dinner party scene that’s almost cringe-worthy in execution. This same scene, though, could have been neat if the tone being targeted was more in the horror-comedy vein, but a funny bone—even if just to relieve tension—is conspicuously absent in the film. In the end, then, it becomes a bit of a chore just to make it to the closing credits.

Oh, and a final note on the acting, as the cast may be one reason folks have for catching this film. Bailee Madison emerges with her reputation as a talented child actor pretty much intact. Still, it’s not the breakout platform she could have hoped for—her character seems too derivative of the protagonist in Pan’s Labyrinth (which Del Torro actually wrote subsequently), so that the part doesn’t really serve her abilities as well as it might. True, there’s room for some interesting character development, particularly regarding her shift from befriending her malevolent housemates to, well, wanting to avoid them. However, either the script doesn’t sufficiently throw this theme into relief, or Nixey was unable to guide Madison to underscore that through-line in her performance. Either way there’s a missed opportunity. Ditto for Katie Holmes, who’s actually trying very hard here and can be a better actor than people give her credit for. Her role likewise gives early hints of being dimensional but then quickly descends into a variation on the standard trope of the stepmother-trying-to-earn-the-love of-the-stepchild. Worst of all, by far, is the fate suffered by Guy Piece. After reliably solid work in recent films such as The King’s Speech, Animal Kingdom, and The Hurt Locker (not to mention years of interesting starring roles), here he’s reduced to Generic Dad status. You keep thinking as you watch Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark that the film has something up its sleeve, that his character will break out of his blandness any minute—and that that’s when Pierce’s talents will really shine, in those moments of stunning reversal. But he remains generic, despite your waiting for things to kick into another gear and jolt you with innovation, or edginess, or even old-fashioned but effective shocks…

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‘Conan the Barbarian’ movie review, trailer: A warning

Like a 5 a.m. alarm — loud, insistent, unwelcome — "Conan the Barbarian" warns that the dreamy summer is coming to an end. A re-make of the loopy 1982 sword-and-sandals classic — loosely based on Robert E. Howard's 1930s stories — the new version has poured gold into special effects, not to mention star Jason Momoa.

Virtually his own special effect, the studly Momoa arrives fresh from his turn as Khal Drogo in HBO's "Game of Thrones." He is the 21st Century's go-to guy for monosyllabic wandering warriors.

This plot sends him on a long and fruitless search for a good bit of dialogue. The last Conan's limited usage of English catapulted him into the California governor's mansion, but we've seen how that turned out.

The new version begins with some family bonding. First, Conan's mother dies giving birth to him on a battlefield. Next, 12-year-old Conan impresses his dad by bringing him the heads of several enemies.



Then, evil warlord Khalar Zym (Stepehn Lang) arrives with his warriors to overrun Conan's village and force Pops to kill himself to save his son. Oh, and he also makes off with a magic talisman, the final piece of a mask that will enable him to do something bad, or worse, just not yet.

The rest of the movie swings from one bloodletting to the next, set at three volumes: loud, too loud and painfully loud. Think of "Conan" as an opportunity for a modern double-feature. You can still listen to it while watching another movie in the next hall of the local multiplex.

For all the head-chopping, thumb-screwing, town-sacking, arm-slashing, horse-punching, boulder-rolling and nose-hacking, what this Conan truly eviscerates is a sense of humor. Director Marcus Nispel is best known for the 2003 remake of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." He doesn't do witty.

Fun fact: Arnold Schwarzenegger had to cut back on his lifting and steroids regime for the previous "Conan," because when rehearsals started he was too musclebound to wield a sword. That's why many of his fight scenes focused more on flexing and ponderously raising the weapon.

As a director, Schwarzenegger had batshit but dedicated John Milius, who worked over a story by Edmund Summer and an initial script by Oliver Stone. Milius infused it with his crypto-Nitzschean philosophizing, but also a fractured reality.

Over the years, production designer Ron Cobb has said their goal was to faithfully recreate an imaginary era, with distinct cultures drawn from Romans and Persians and Milius' beloved Mongols.

That Conan's description of what is best in life — "to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women" — is a simplified version of a quote attributed to Genghis Khan in "The Secret History of the Mongols."

The remake has no such pretensions, or aspirations. This Conan says, "I live, I love, I slay and I am content." Script credits are assigned to Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer and Sean Hood, who wrote with the certainty that computer graphics would distract the audience from their work.

At times, they do. After having inadvertently rescued female monk Tamara, whose blood Zym needs, Conan faces sand-and-gravel warriors conjured by Marique, the evil warlord's evil daughter.

There are glowing Maxfield Parrish-settings for soaring minarets and castles, a long-tentacled watery monster, and the occasional distant procession of extras left over from "The Lord of the Rings."

But there's no image quite as useful of the Wheel of Pain in the first movie, with the young Conan chained to push with other slaves in a scene that shows years passing in moments, until he walks alone, fully and even excessively grown.

With two — count 'em — significant female roles, as well as topless serving wenches and topless tavern dancers, "Conan" also does something to fight unemployment among well-endowed actresses.

As Tamara, TV favorite Rachel Nichols starts out strongly enough, although she's later called upon to do a whole series worth of screaming. Like Momoa and unshaven nomads, when you need an evil daughter, Rose McGowan is your girl, even if she looks like she's been trapped in a "Babylon Five" time warp.

But neither one is Valeria, the sword-fighting thief played by Sandhal Bergman who equaled and even rescued Conan in the 1982 movie. And of course, Lang is no James Earl Jones, the monumental villain of that first production.

My Cimmerian ancestors may not be rolling over in their burial mounds over the state of Conan. Even Howard's pulp fiction has little to do with the origins claimed by the royalty of the Franks, who traced their lineage to King Antenor the Cimmerian, who died in 443 B.C.

But I do think the current version would be better if done by Conan O'Brien. As it is, it already amounts to "Conan the Barbarian, please stop."

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Fright Night Movie Review

As we’re drowning in a flood of big screen remakes, we ask ourselves time and time again; is it worth it? In Fright Night‘s case, yes. As we’re drowning in a flood of 3D features, we ask ourselves time and time again; is it worth it? In Fright Night‘s case, no, but, luckily for director Craig Gillespie, he’s working with some solid source material and an absolutely stellar cast, both with the power to stake that extra dimension right in the heart. If only it’d burn up and evaporate for good.

For anyone familiar with the Tom Holland original, this synopsis is a bit redundant as Gillespie’s Fright Night is quite similar. Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) is your average teen living with his loving mother (Toni Collette) in a quaint little neighborhood – that is until Jerry Dandridge (Colin Farrell) moves in next door and rips out the locals’ throats as he pleases. Why? Because Charley’s new neighbor is a vampire.

Peter Vincent (David Tennant) is still present and accounted for, but now he hosts “Fright Night” the live stage production, chugs Midori and dons skintight leather pants. When Jerry snatches up a couple of Charley’s friends, Charley’s got no choice but to head to the Vegas Strip to get some advice from the showman. Too bad the act is primarily a façade and Vincent lacks the nerve to put his extensive weaponry collection to use. With no one to turn to, Charley’s mother and girlfriend, Amy’s (Imogen Poots), lives are in his hands.

Fright Night’s opening sequence provides an excellent taste of what you’re in for; a vampire film that isn’t particularly scary. Sure, the 1985 movie is a horror comedy and offers a nice amalgamation of the genres, but this updated version definitely highlights its funny bone. While the favoritism makes for a weak opening, Fright Night is amusing enough to carry on as a comedy with a little grit and gore to it.

Christopher Mintz-Plasse is one of the funnier of the bunch as Charley’s ex-best friend, Ed. Ed holds a grudge after Charley ditches their geeky past for cooler friends, but when another buddy, Adam (Will Denton), goes missing, Ed turns to Charley for help in hopes he’ll believe his vampire theory. Sure enough, he doesn’t. Think about that for a moment; Mintz-Plasse as the school nerd attempting to convince someone that vampires are real; the role is made for him and Mintz-Plasse seizes the opportunity. He works wonders with the friendly, but testy banter between Ed and Charley and, later on, has no trouble switching gears to show off his darker side. Tennant also earns some laughs embellishing Vincent’s idiosyncrasies, but he’s held back by his character’s cliché rock star woes – a drinking problem, hard exterior but soft core and childhood troubles.

As for our leading ladies, only one matters, Poots. Collette does a fine job as Charley’s mother, Jane, but the role is particularly menial. Poots, on the other hand, is right by Charley’s side from beginning to end, and thrives on some rather original traits and solid chemistry with Yelchin. Amy isn’t your average teen movie girlfriend; she’s got sass and a mind of her own. Rather than care for the couple because they seem to fit together in idealistic movie land, Charley and Amy work on an impressively authentic and charming level.

Plus, her main man is quite endearing. Yelchin is an ideal Charley Brewster. He’s sweet and loving, yet it’s entirely believable when watching him lock and load to defend the women he loves. Yelchin has an exceptional amount of range when it comes to working with his co-stars. He establishes a solid mother-son relationship with Collette, lets the sparks fly with Poots and turns on the wit when bickering with Mintz-Plasse. But, best of all, he’s got quite the opponent in Farrell. Farrell has an absolute blast as Jerry. It shows and it’s also very appropriate. Part of the reason the new Fright Night works so well with its more comedic twist is because of its unintentionally funny Jerry. Jerry enjoys tormenting his victims in the most outlandish ways. Farrell is a thrill when showing off his supernatural vampire skills and is surprisingly just as compelling when exercising his intellect in a one-on-one conversation.

The acting is top notch and the writing solid enough to earn your interest; the problems are in the visuals. There is absolutely no reason for this movie to be in 3D. As many scenes take place during the night, quite a few are frustratingly dark. Plus, the only time the 3D is even noticeable is when it’s too noticeable, like when Gillespie makes a conscious decision to throw a paint can or cross in your face. But, even if the film lost the extra dimension, it’d still have technical problems. Sure, Fright Night establishes itself as more of a comedy than horror film, but some of the effects are a bit too cartoonish. There’s a car chase scene that feels more like one of those virtual reality rides in an amusement park than multi-million dollar special effects work.

Still, these are only minor distractions in a primarily enjoyable piece. It’s labeled a modern take on the 1985 original and that’s exactly what we’ve got – a hot new location, better makeup design, subpar yet more realistic effects, pop culture references, Twilight namedropping and a contemporary soundtrack. As fantastical as the piece is, it’s oddly relatable and just too much fun to dismiss.

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Iti Mrinalini (2011)-Bengali Movie Review

It is a bit tough to write a review of a film that has already been written about extensively much before its Indian release. But that is routine for any film directed by Aparna Sen. Iti Mrinalini is no different. The difference lies in the storyline created by Sen jointly with Ranjan Ghosh. For the first time, she deals with the glamorous world of a top film star of Bengali cinema in the 1970s. This is rather fragile territory for a director who has herself reigned supreme in Bengali mainstream cinema for two decades or more because autobiographical references could get out of control. But Sen being Sen, instead of turning the film into a self-reflexive film-within-a-film, which would have been predictable, she makes it an introspective journey into the past by a fictional actress who decides to end her life.

The film is structured through a suicide note the mellow and ageing Mrinalini (Aparna Sen) begins to write because, “Timing is the first lesson an actress learns in cinema. I had no control over my entry into this world. But I can decide on my exit,” she writes. She picks out pieces of memorabilia from a box to tear and throw them away in the waste bin by her table. Each memorabilia – a faded photograph, posters of old films, broken bangles brings back memories of a life lived in the world of glamour and fame and the power that comes of it, with the pain of betrayal, death of loved ones, and loneliness simmering underneath. Sometimes, she stops from tearing off a photograph. More often, she crumples the paper she has written on and throws it away only to begin on a fresh white sheet and crumple it up and throw it away again. The past telescopes into these sessions of her nostalgic journey through time and space, as we see the young Mrinalini (Konkona Sen Sharma) growing up through college, through a sweet relationship with Abhijeet (Shaheb Bhattacharya), a Naxalite who is shot by the police while trying to escape.

Just before she begins penning this note, we find Mrinalini resuming her career after a 15-year gap as Kunti in an English-language film Born of the Sun, persuaded by the US-trained Indian director Imtiaz Chowdhury (Priyangshu Chatterjee) who also steps into the role of Karna in the film. The two have an affair and Imtiaz promises to cast her once again as the young Nandini in Tagore’s philosophical play Rakta Karabi (Red Oleanders). On the night of the premiere, she is shocked to find Imtiaz cuddling up to a young and up-coming starlet (Ananya Chatterjee) who, the producer announces, will be Nandini. This final culmination of a life filled with lost love, betrayal, grief over her child’s death in an air crash, and the pain born of constant loneliness, invasion into privacy leads to the suicide note.

Sen makes no attempt to rationalize Mrinalini’s adulterous, long-term relationship with Siddhartha Sarkar (Rajat Kapoor) who gave her her first break and also sired her only child. He is a happily married man with two kids, yet keeps up the relationship with false promises of a subsequent marriage. He even goes through the charade of a ‘temple wedding.’ Why it takes an intelligent girl like Mrinalini to wizen up to his double life and that too, by her uneducated dresser Kamala-di underscores not her stupidity but her vulnerability and her longing for love.

What comes across is the top star’s desperate desire to belong, to have a family, to love and be loved though she has left her old mother behind in their old dilapidated rented place in North Calcutta. Her closest bonding based on purely platonic love is with the writer Chintan Nair (Koushik Sen), a South Indian who has studied in Santi Niketan short listed for the Booker for his book Red Earth. He teaches her three most important lessons in love – that love comes in different forms, that not all love need end in marriage and that ideal love is the one that sets you free. He goes back to his crippled wife Meera to Pondicherry but keeps in constant touch through texts and calls on her cell.

Ironically, the most immediate and long-lasting bonding the lonely Mrinalini develops is with her dresser Kamala-di, Moti, the maid and her German Retriever Begum she has taken on probably after her daughter’s death. The film moves smoothly between the past and the present sometimes marking the dividing line with a question, sometimes with uncertainty but almost seamless, thanks to Rabi Ranjan Maitra’s wonderful editorial flourishes. The late Somak Mukherjee’s camera moves across time, space and people with the fluid strokes of an accomplished painter who knows his colour, light and form as well as he knows his subject., Mrinalini, captured mainly in half-light while penning the letter, her pained face held in close-up at different angles expanding to capture the wideness of the beaches and the waves of the sea.

Debajyoti Mishra’s music comprises of three songs, one a Tagore song, amaar mukti aloye aloye sung partly as a duet by the young Mrinalini and her daughter along the beaches of a sea, a Sunil Gangopadhyay poem set to music, and one fast number that forms the title song of Bish Kanya, a mainstream film she has starred in that scans the young star’s coping with the accessories that come with stardom – drinks, cigarettes, joints, etc. It is a brilliantly positioned and picturised sequence. The film captures the ‘look’ of the 1970s Kolkata covering Presidency College when many brilliant students surrendered to the Naxalite movement, scanning over the city as it grew along with Mrinalini, and turns glamorous as she does. This perhaps, is Sen’s most lavishly mounted film till date.

The art direction (not mentioned in the credits) carry the signature marks of an actress’ home – with a sketch of Charlie Chaplin, a huge poster of the Beatles and a much bigger poster of Marlyn Monroe. When she becomes a star, the spaces between these posters are filled with black-and-white photographs of Mrinalini, the star. The premiere show of Born of the Sun has the typical touch of a star-studded do filled with the bright red poster of the film and the razzmatazz of starry presence. The location shooting on the beaches where Siddharth teaches his daughter to shout ‘Cut’ is touching.

Like all Aparna Sen films, Iti Mrinalini is filled with silent images that speak out a thousand words filled with poignant meaning. Siddhartha, who never displayed much interest in Shona, his daughter born of his relationship with Mrinalini, opens his wallet once. In front, we see a picture of his two sons. He digs into the back pocket to bring out another jaded Black-and-White photograph of the little Shona lying in his chest. Mrinalini, about to tear off a picture of Siddhartha and Shona, stops suddenly and keeps it aside. A framed portrait of Chintan rests on the elderly Mrinalini’s writing desk. She picks it up as if to console herself. She clicks on her cell to message Chintan, or to read a message from him.

The scene where the young Mrinalini breaks down on Chintan’s wife Mira’s lap, collapsing into tears spells out the tragedy of her life within those brief moments, the soundtrack filled with her heart-rending sobs. One recalls the scene from Mehboob’s Mother India where Nargis was caught in the studio fire and rescued by Sunil Dutt who played her son in the film. There is a similar scene where the studio fire gets out of control and Imtiaz rescues an unconcsious Mrinalini. Her first word after regaining consciousness is “Kamala-di” and the message is clear – Kamala-di has been engulfed in the flames. The next shot shows Mrinalini coiled up in a narrow, single bed. Later, we notice a slightly faded Black-and-White photograph of Kamala-di hanging on one wall.

The small cameos are wonderfully fleshed out and enacted. Dulal Lahiri as Prasad Sen, the producer who replaces her suddenly and then comes back to her when she is famous, Gargi Roy Chowdhury as Sumitra Devi, a famous star who engineers the replacement, Rita Koiral as Moti, the sensitive maid, Suzanne Bernert as Julia, Mrinalini’s sister-in-law and Locket Chatterjee as Siddharth’s wife Maithili are lovely cameos. The little girl who plays Shona with her heavily accented Bengali is fresh, spontaneous and lovely. Srijit Mukherjee as Ronojoy Mitra is stiff, self-conscious and expression-less. His is perhaps the only mole on a beautiful face.

Among the major performers, the icing and the cake go directly to Konkona Sen Sharma who as the younger Mrinalini, is mind-blowing in a layered performance that maps her slow growth from a naïve, fresh college girl with big dreams to a hesitant newcomer to Tollygunge to a successful star with the airs of stardom she carries with élan, to the love-struck woman longing for a husband and kids, to a slightly wizened young woman educated anew by Chintan. This is another award-worthy performance by Konkona.

Aparna Sen rightly looks a jaded beauty proud of her star status used mainly to hide her pain but her performance is touched with a bit too much of self-pity and a martyrdom one does not expect from her films. Priyangshu is self-conscious at times but perhaps that is how the character is designed. Rajat Kapoor is his suave, sophisticated, arrogant self as Siddhartha enriched by the voice of Anjan Dutt who dubbed his lines. Shaheb as Abhijeet is candid and fresh in a brief cameo and looks the part. Koushik Sen with stubble and an unusual hairstyle, lines spoken with a distinct Southern accent, comes right after Konkona in a controlled performance held completely in reign in every single scene from his entry to his exit.

The few loopholes this critic feels like questioning are – unlike Aparna Sen’s optimistic approach, this one ends on a very pessimistic note. Mrinalini is fleshed out more as a victim and a martyr than as a strong woman who knows her mind. Nothing wrong in that but Sen does it differently every time. Secondly, the closure is a bit melodramatic for the Sen directorial signature to fit into. Thirdly, one wonders when and where Mrinalini had the time and the opportunity to read up so much on W.B. Yeats, Tagore and Chitan’s Booker Prize novel to be able to quote them from memory since we know nothing about her academic background. Only once we see her asleep on the back seat of her car with an open book lying on her chest other than the book-lined walls of her study which is mandatory in every star’s home mostly as part of the décor.

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