The Wrestlers

Lofty claims are made for Indian poet and film-maker Dasgupta, who has been compared to everybody from Ray to Fellini. Adapted from a story by Samaresh Bose, this rambling, quietly surrealist tale of two friends who love to wrestle is slow-burning but beguiling. The humour is very deadpan. We see passing parades of midgets and circus folk. The trees and fields are exquisitely photographed, and the film is lit throughout in a magical, crepuscular light. At first, this seems like sheer whimsy, but gradually the mood darkens as Dasgupta begins to hint at all sorts of tensions - religious and sexual - lurking beneath the surface of a deceptively placid rural world.