Icche

Rituparna Sengupta

Directed by:

Nandita Roy and Shibaprasad Mukherjee

Cinematographer : Soumik Haldar

Music,Background Score and Lyrics:

Surojit Chatterjee (Bhoomi)

Cast:

Bratya Basu,Sohini Sengupta,Samadarshi Dutta,Bidita Bag and Ruplekha Mitra

Icche turns the sweet-and-syrupy-unstoppable-glycerine factory of the screen mother on its head to present a reverse situation. Mamata (Sohini Sengupta) is a case of borderline personality disorder. This disorder threatens to cross the borderline in her ways of manipulating,controlling,designing and patterning the life,education,future and love life of son Soumik (Samadarshi Dutta). Soumik is a brilliant student and an obedient,loving son who does not need the compulsive dictation to which his mother cruelly subjects him. Yet,the badgering goes on.

Shibaprasad Mukherjee and Nandita Roy show a rare command over the language of cinema in their debut film. It needed courage to put forth such an aggressive,non-conformist story. The mother’s obsession come across in scenes like the one where,in her mother’s village home she has gone to after a tiff with Soumik,she hides behind the door like a girl in love when Soumik suddenly arrives and calls out to her from across the pond. Another scene brings out her cruel side. She pulls out her dusty harmonium to play on after having successfully broken Soumik’s relationship with his first girl-friend Debjani (Rooplekha),insulting and humiliating him in front of his friends by reading out their love letters to them. The mother-son relationship almost instantly moves on to a war footing.

Sohini Sengupta is outstanding as the vacillating,volatile,affectionate,possessive and manipulative Mamata. She had won the National Award for her performance in Paromitar Ek Din. FTII Graduate Samadarshi Dutta,making his debut as Soumik matches Sohini moment to moment,scene to scene beautifully,expressing the anxiety of losing his second love Jayati (Bidita Bag) who he secretly marries on his birthday. Bratya Basu as the simple,understanding father who tries to persuade his wife repeatedly but fails is very good in a character that is against the negative mould he is generally given. His love for his son comes out in a scene where he completely botches up the breakfast when the mother is away. Newcomer Rooplekha is very good as the shaky,nervous,teenager Debjani while Bidita Bag’s Jayati is too loud to begin with but tapers down over the rest of the film,investing the apparently facile character with rare depth.

The severance between the mother and son is inevitable but moving. Soumik catches her sitting in front of an old trunk—a nocturnal habit—smelling the clothes he wore as a boy,clutching a cup he won somewhere,holding out a certificate to him. He holds her hands,presses them to his cheeks,his face and tells her ,“Those certificates and cups are lies,mother,I am for real,see?” and hugging her close,whispers in her ear that he has married Jayati,not taken his honours exams and is leaving for Mumbai with an ordinary job,then sticks a Xerox of the marriage certificate into her numb hands. Her dreams—her dreams,not his—of Soumik going to Oxford and Harvard and delivering speeches are dashed forever. But then,so is Soumik’s life.

Though the portrayal of the three main actors gives the film the strength it pulsates with,it is Soumik Halder’s camera that is one of the stellar characters of the film. He does not stop surprising us with his magic. The songs and the music are the downside because they do not belong,never mind the rich quality. The only song by the Bangladeshi singer Anusheh is beautifully positioned,picturised and sung apart from another number that forms the theme song.

RATING: The film rightly deserves four stars – direction,screenplay and dialogue,cinematography and acting.