Film Impressions

REVIEW: The Japanese Wife

ROMANCING THE PEN

'Arithmetic teacher's Japani bou has sent another package!' is the whisper that slowly spreads through the Sundarbans as awe and curiosity follow the mailman and a large box to Snehamoy's home. Rahul Bose plays the introvert teacher who lives in his mashi's home. We are not surprised at the life he creates with the letters he writes to his pen friend, Miyagi, who turns out to be yet another lonely soul living in faraway Japan.

'My meaning of my name is gift,' she writes and he responds, 'sneha means affection and moy means full of'. Both of them apologize for their English (which means you get to hear the delightfully vernacular enunciation where Rahul Bose says 'auph' instead of the simple 'of' or 'kotayed' instead of 'coated') and we slowly discover the double life of mastermoshai.

REVIEW: The Japanese Wife

ODE TO LOVE

A film by Aparna Sen is an event to wait for. Sense, sensibility and a high degree of aesthetic quality are a given in her films.

The Japanese Wife, based on a Kunal Basu story, is a delicately narrated, beautifully shot elegy to love; it's biggest fault being that it belongs to the wrong period. A bizarre story of a marriage between two people who have never met sounds very implausible now. But Sen tells it with love and empathy for her characters, with gentle acceptance for their quirks, and makes it almost believable.