• Source: Mondo Meyer Upakhyan

Mondo Meyer Upakhyan (Bengali: মন্দ মেয়ের উপাখ্যান) is a 2002 Indian Bengali-language film directed and written by Buddhadev Dasgupta. The film was also released under the English title A Tale of A Naughty Girl and French title Chroniques Indiennes. The film stars Samata Das in the title role. It also stars Tapas Paul, Rituparna Sengupta, Sreelekha Mitra, Sudipta Chakraborty and June Malia. The film won National Film Award for Best Feature Film in 2003.




Plot


Based on a short story by Bengali writer Prafulla Roy, the central idea developed by director Dasgupta, tells the story of a girl, Lati (Samata Das), whose mother Rajani (Rituparna Sengupta) is a prostitute living and working in a brothel in rural India. Rajani plans to offer her daughter to an older man, a rich husband and protector to her daughter. Lati, however, wants to return to school and finish her studies. Unwilling to pay such a price for material success, she runs away to Calcutta. The discovery of this new world is described parallel to other stories of emancipation, such as that of three young prostitutes, of an aged couple going nowhere and man's landing on the Moon. In a surrealistic approach typical of the director, a clumsy cat and an intelligent donkey are also present in the film.
Ganesh (Tapas Paul) works full-time as a driver for wealthy Bengali-speaking, Natabar Paladhi (Ram Gopal Bajaj), who lives in a mansion with his wife, children and grandchildren, and runs 'Anjali Cinema' He has Ganesh use his vehicle as a private taxi cab. Amongst Ganesh's customers are a woman named Bakul (June Malia), who alights near a town of Gosaipara to take up prostitution with Jamunabai; an abandoned elderly couple who are in need of hospitalization — there is none in the vicinity, and they end up secretly riding with Ganesh all the time; while Natabar uses this vehicle to travel to Gosaipara to visit a prostitute named Rajani and negotiate with her so that he can have her 14-year-old daughter, Lati, as his mistress. Things get complicated when Lati rebels against her mother so she can return to school, and a prostitute is about to get killed by her vengeful husband.




Cast


Samata Das as Lati
Tapas Paul as Ganesh
Rituparna Sengupta as Rajani
Sreelekha Mitra as Ayesha
Sudipta Chakraborty as Basanti
June Malia as Bakul
Arpan Basar as Shibu
Ram Gopal Bajaj as Natabar Paladhi
Pradip Mukherjee as Nagen
Pavan Bandhopadhyay
Debjani Biswas
Kajol Chowdhuri
Ketaki Dutta
Arjun Guha Thakurta
Saroj Gupta
Fakir Das Kumar
Subrata Mukherjee
Anup Mukhyopadhyay




Crew


Directed: Buddhadev Dasgupta
Screenplay: Buddhadev Dasgupta
Produced: Arya Bhattacharjee
Music: Buddhadev Dasgupta
Cinematography: Venu
Film Editing: Raviranjan Maitra
Art Direction: Kousik Sarkar




Promotion


Directors like Dasgupta (and others of his ilk like Adoor Gopalakrishnan or Mrinal Sen) make movies that are very specific to their own cultural milieu. A great master like the late Satyajit Ray was never comfortable when he stepped outside his native Bengal with his camera. So too Dasgupta. His latest work, Mondo Meyer Upakhyan (A Tale of a Naughty Girl), is set in his favourite Purulia, a backward region in West Bengal. Beyond these main travails of Lati, Dasgupta presents a gripping account of village life. On Dasgupta's canvas, one witnesses life in all its splendour. A Tale of a Naughty Girl is undoubtedly a piece of celluloid that elevates cinema to another realm. It is extremely positive, and probably comes from a deep sense of peace and tranquillity that Dasgupta must have achieved from his poetic inclination.




Released






Awards


2003: Anandalok Awards – Best Director – Buddhadeb Dasgupta
2003: Best ASEAN Film Award – Buddhadev Dasgupta
2003: National Film Award for Best Feature Film – Arya Bhattacharya (Producer), Buddhadev Dasgupta (Director)




References






External links


Mondo Meyer Upakhyan at IMDb
www.arjoe.com

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Buddhadeb Dasgupta
• Penghargaan Film Nasional India ke-50
• Tapas Paul
• Penghargaan Film Nasional untuk Film Fitur Terbaik (India)
• Mondo Meyer Upakhyan
• Buddhadeb Dasgupta
• Rituparna Sengupta
• Samata Das
• List of works by Rituparna Sengupta
• Tapas Paul
• National Film Awards
• Cinema of West Bengal
• Devdas (2002 Hindi film)
• Sudipta Chakraborty