Chiriakhana

A couple of murders in a bizarre refuge for social outcasts, a miscellany of suspicious characters each with crisscrossing motives, a brilliant private eye to sift the clues, assemble the suspects and unmask the killer: unlikely Ray material, and the lucidity with which he characteristically presents the intricacies of human affairs sits uneasily with the misdirections and concealments required by whodunit conventions. The film (apparently undertaken as a favour to the producer, Ray's former assistant Harendranath Bhattacharya) is intermittently gripping with some surprisingly broad comic interludes, but overall, and at such length, more than slightly tedious. No admirer of Ray will want to miss it, but admirers of Dorothy L Sayers will relish it most.