The Japanese Wife

After women centric trilogy of Paramitar Ekdin, Mr and Mrs Iyer and 15 Park Avenue, this is Aparna Sen’s attempt on a man centric movie. The movie was labelled as a love poem. Truly it was a lyrical love ballad. It almost transcends to a surreal world. It reminds us of all the epistolary love novels. It reminds us of all those platonic love lyrics where the couple never meet. Strangely while watching the movie I suddenly recollected another B grade Bollywood pot boiler “Sirf Tum” which incidentally had the same theme of pen friends falling in love and remaining faithful to each other throughout. Even a sizzling dance number by Sushmita Sen in her sexiest avatar was unable to seduce the hero and distract him from his love. Similarly, in The Japanese Wife Raima Sen was unable to seduce Snehomoy.
Raima Sen’s character was short and somewhat forced into the narrative. Her character was manipulated to show the dedication of Snehomoy towards his Japanese wife. The crying sequence in the middle of the night was quite imposed to create a situation where Snehomoy was forced to caress her. It was quite amateurish on the part of a seasoned director like Aparna Sen
Rahul Bose is a tremendous actor and in this movie he tried his best but his ultra suave image stood as a hindrance. Rahul Bose is one such actor who speaks impeccable English and highly anglicised Bangla. Weirdly in The Japanese Wife his character demanded him to speak in a regional Bengali and atrocious English, thus making his dialogues appear onerous.
The cinematography earns applauds. Sundarbans was explored like never before. This is the time Aparna Sen should start thinking of buying the rights of Hungry Tide.
Moushumi Chatterjee did justice to her part. the only hilarious part in the movie was when she mistakenly heard the name Miyagi as “maagi”. Raima Sen is maturing as an actress although here she hardly had any role.
When Raima sees Miyagi she almost feels a sadistic pleasure. The ironical smile says a lot. Both the women were unable to posses Snehomoy completely. One was able to posses his soul and the other was partly able to possess his body. But in the end both stood widowed of him. They almost became comrades in their grief.