HOUSEFUL (2009)- One of the year’s best Bengali film. It has also been selected for Osian’s Cinefan 11th Film Festival.

 Synopsis

The thin line between Cinema and reality smudges and overlaps at one point in the life of Nikhil, who is a filmmaker. Constantly ignored by the critics and lack of success at the box-office,takes his carrier to a critical point, where he has to deliver a 'Houseful' in order to survive. Samir, the booker of his films, pleads with Nikhil to copy a hit Tamil or Telegu film to ensure success.

But when Nikhil sets to make a love story on the popular lines, somehow the realities of a terror infested world takes over once again, like his earlier films.....

Format – 35m.m. Cinemascope
Sound – Dolby SR
Country of Production – India
Language – Bengali ( subtitled in English )
Duration – 127 minutes.

Cast – Prosenjit Chatterjee, Rimjhim Gupta, Rwita Datta Chakraborty, Rachna Shah, Nitya Ganguly, Nemai Ghosh, Usashi Chakraborty, Sreelekha Mitra and Rupa Bhattacharya.
Writer & Director – Bappaditya Bandopadhyay
Producer – Debasish Saha & Sima Saha
Cinematographer – Rana Dadgupta
Editor – Deepak Mandal
Art Director – Gautam Bose
Music – Kaya & Abhijit Bose
Sound Designer – Tirthankar Majumder (Tito)

                                         

                                                                           

‘Life is a strange joke one cracks at oneself.’ This quote opens Bappaditya Bandopadhyay’s Houseful, spelt with a single ‘l’, a subtle hint that the ‘house’ is yet to be ‘full’, with one more ‘l’ in the end. A television newscast captures a bomb blast ~ blood-splattered streets, stretchers with bodies pulled this way and that, bomb squads nosing around in some undefined place as the newsreader pronounces one more example of human hate encapsulated for the voyeuristic pleasure of the viewers. The camera pulls back to add perspective. It is not a television newscast but a scene from Nikhil Banerjee (Prosenjit)’s latest film. He is watching his own film in a near-empty, darkened theatre. Like his earlier films, this one too, is a disaster. Outside, in the disgruntled exhibitor’s tiny office, Nikhil’s sole friend and sympathizer (Nitya Ganguly), is persuading the old man to hang on to the film for a day or two more, in vain.
The film-within-the-film is about a television weather caster, put behind bars for her supposed involvement in the blast because the call that triggered the blast is traced back to her cell phone. She lies down in her dark, solitary cell, coiled unto herself like a foetus in a mother’s womb, dressed in black, waiting for a future without hope. The sympathetic friend tries to talk Nikhil into copying from South Indian blockbusters frame-to-frame like successful mainstream filmmakers in Bengali cinema, but Nikhil remains silent, indicating his refusal to bend his own rules.
His disgusted wife leaves him with their little girl in tow. A bank’s henchmen take away the car keys, loan sharks throw threats. But Nikhil remains unfazed. He plans his next film, a ‘love story’. Suddenly, the characters of this ‘love story’ come alive in front of his eyes. He can actually see the boy distributing handbills dressed like a clown approach the crooner Nikhil saw in a bar. The boy clambers up the steps of a dilapidated mansion with its paper peeling off the walls, a frame without the picture on one wall, come alive. Are they for real? Or are they Nikhil’s rich imagination concocting scenes for another film?
Houseful is one of the most unabashedly autobiographical films in Indian cinema. Nikhil wears an unkempt beard like Bappaditya does. His cell-phone carries the ring tone Bappaditya uses. He is as low-profile and down-to-earth as Bappaditya is. The posters of Nikhil’s films carry the titles of Bappaditya’s past films. The musical score, traversing freely between folk songs floating in from far away and the mood background score and songs, fits into the Goddardian mood of the film, a journey from the surreal to the real and back.
The skeleton-like narrative winds its way through the narrow bylanes of Nikhil’s mind and the characters he encounters and relates with ~ in real life, in his films, already made or still being conceived, or being shot right now. The two most memorable scenes in the film are one, a huge, antique four-poster bed being carted on a trailer to Nikhil’s lush green location outdoors with a studio hand merrily relaxing on it; and two, the closing scene with shots from Nikhil’s new film ~ also a disaster ~ showing the leading lady playing a sad tune on the piano till the camera moves back to show a huge screen set against the lashing waves of the sea, with Nikhil’s and his distributor friend’s dwarfed figures, partly in silhouette, discussing whether it would be worthwhile after all to embark on a Bengali remake of a South Indian hit!
The four striking qualities of Houseful are ~ Prosenjit’s low-key, silent and outstanding performance complemented beautifully by Nitya Ganguly, the soft, underplayed and sad musical score by Kaya (Band) and Abhijit Basu, the incredibly beautiful production design that is layered with visual metaphors and repetition and Rana Dasgupta’s magnificient cinematography. Dasgupta’s work is a model lesson for students of cinematography. He toys with Black-and-White, monochromistic tones, soft colours, darkness and brightness racing for attention like characters in a film, and the lush velvety green of the location. Bappaditya blends the sinister with the sublime, sophistication with crudity, melancholy with hope and attachment set against alienation.