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Bookmark this page36 Chowringhee Lane (1981)
Director: Aparna Sen
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Being the tatty Calcutta apartment where a sixty-ish Anglo-Indian schoolteacher stagnates in austere spinsterhood. The companionship temporarily promised by a young couple who use her flat as a secret trysting-place tempts her out of self-imposed purdah, but her disillusionment is swift and terrible. In fact her life is portrayed as a succession of downbeat events - from the early loss of a sweetheart, fallen in the war, to her brother's death and the final indignity of demotion - and the material doesn't mesh with debut director Aparna Sen's predilection for extravagant effects (arty editing, a surreal dream sequence, clumsily signalled climaxes). However, the film is miraculously rescued from shallow melancholia by Jennifer Kendal's performance, which invests the 'repressed old maid' stereotype with surprising subtlety and tenderness.Author: SJo
Cast & crew
Director: Aparna Sen
Producer: Shashi Kapoor
Cast: Jennifer Kendal, Dhritiman Chatterjee, Debashree Roy, Geoffrey Kendal, Soni Razdan full cast
Duration: 122 mins
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