Review: Aamra

A movie for the youth, about the youth and by the youth. That's precisely what the makers of Aamra proclaims it to be. It is about six characters from diverse backgrounds and their take on love and sex. In fact its also officially the first sex comedy in Bengali.

Amit (Jisshu) is a telefilm director who has just had her girlfriend (Pallavi Chatterjee), older than him and a wife and mother, walking out of their relationship. On a chat site he meets Shreya (Ananya Chatterjee). Shreya, young, pretty and sexy, is a teacher in a junior high school. She has just dumped Raj (Parambrata) who is a wannabe rockstar struggling to make it big. Raj hooks up Sunny (Debutant Momo), an undergraduade student in the same college/university, who has a secret relationship with Tapas (Kaushik Ghosh), her English professor. Bhasha (Nilanjana) is the professor's wife with an aspiration for acting. She meets Amit for a drama audition and starts liking him in subsequent meets. Except Tapas who is 39, all others are in their early to late twenties.

The film has deliberately not attempted to answer the quest for true love. At the end some of the characters find themselves better placed in the new relationships while some don't know what awaits them, yet they are satisfied with their decisions.

The director has done a damn good job of casting of most of the characters. Almost all the actors look their part. Param, Momo, Kaushik and Nilanjana have delivered extremely credible performances. So have Rudraneel and Rajatava in small roles. The realistic and easily identifiable characters helped, especially Param, Momo and Rudra. Momo hardly looks a debutant. Nilanjana, with a bit of motherly weight gain, looks the age and persona of Bhasha. Ananya is good too, except that her fluent English sounds a bit rehearsed sometimes. But though Jisshu looks a complete dude, his character should have been given a different background more suitable with his look and persona, and not that of a telefilm director. He is a mismatch.

Mainak Bhaumik, based in US, having made two international award-winning documentaries, debuts with feature film in Aamra. He has used a documentary style and non-linear narrative. The characters introduce themselves to the camera and talk about themselves throughout the film. Around these monologues Mainak weaves a story where they cross the paths of each other and come across new realisations of life. Treatment and style wise the film is a docu-feature on the youth's take on love and sex in contemporary urban society.

The film is urban, cool and chic in feel. A fare share of the dialogues are in English and justifiably so. It looks oven fresh and brutally honest on the take on love. Sex has been dealt with in a natural, straightforward and candid fashion, as a natural element of love and none of the characters are fussy about it. Most of the comic scenes are built around sexual encounters or discussion or banter. Interestingly, the director didn't show any sex scene to make a point as it was not called for by the script. It was pretty evident the makers had a struggling time with the censors as many a time words have been replaced with a beep.


About the visual experience there is one limitation though. Being a digital film, since all outdoor shots have been taken in natural light, many frames look dark on big screen. Most of the film is smartly edited by Shamik, though I feel jump cuts could be used less in some scenes, like the showdown of Pallavi and Jisshu. Such a scene distracts the viewer. Samik Halder's cinematography is minimal and realistic. Among other things the jerky camera movements made the film look candid and very different from the usual fare.The role of handheld camera movement to make the scenes look candid is well accepted, but the degree of it must be intelligently set, else it can make the audience lose focus on the story, like it has done to this film at some places. The dialogues need a special mention. They are extremely real and one can relate to them completely. There are some extremely funny one-liners with a sexual tone, and a fair share of them has gone to Rudraneel. The background score matches the mood.

Finally...... a youth film

Finally we the Bengali film audience is going to have the youth film of our generation (The past generations did it too. Remember Ekhoni by Tapan Sinha). Well, to be precise it is in Benglish (Bengali and English) so that the characters sound real.

Aamra , aptly named (Aamra means 'Us'), is aimed at the urban youth. Produced by this smart, daring, risk-taking producer from Kolkata- Nitesh Sharma of Bangla Talkies and directed by a debutant young NRB (Non-resident Bengali) Mainak Bhaumik, is a film that is officially 'By the youth, about the youth and for the youth'. The film is going to have a December 22 release majorly in multiplexes (Priya is the only single-screen theatre to screen it).

It's a story of the love, heartbreak, attitude, aspiration, relationship, frustration of generation X and young-at-heart (Only one lead character is 40-plus) comprising of six protagonists of diverse backgrounds.

Mainak is US-based and trained in film school. He's made two international award-winning documentaries.

Nitesh has made Raat Barota Paanch, the debut film of Saron 'Shikar' Dutta. A horror film made with mostly TV actors it was a different attempt of 2005. His next creation is Padakkhep by Suman Ghosh, a US-based director with a background of Economics apart from film school. It is currently doing the rounds of international film fests. Nitesh has a single-minded aim- to make sensible, meaningful Bengali cinema and to take it to national and global arena. I salute the spirit and vision of Nitesh and wish all the very best in his journey to make and market better cinema.

The film is also modern in its marketing, a small budget notwithstanding. It's producer has created a nice website (www.banglatalkies.net). After Anuranan, I came across this second Bengali film to have a well-designed website. The look is somehow similar to a scrapbook. That Bengali films are nowadays including internet in their marketing plan is indeed an intelligent and new age sign. Intelligent especially because Bengali films that merit a website generally have modest to small budgets.