Dir. Buddhadeb Dasgupta
About Lati, a prostitute’s daughter who wants to be a student but whose mother wants to marry her off. I thought it was interesting to watch an arthouse Indian film that was set in a small village rather than a bustling city, for a change. I must say the description I got from the Singapore Film Festival guide made me expect a much more depressing film than it turned out to be - was expecting one of those ’life is awful for women’ pictures. Dasgupta does a good job of balancing the terrible nature of life for the women in the brothel - there’s a nice scene near the end where silently the camera just goes room to room and we see the sleeping awful customers and then the saddened prostitutes - with the idea that life isn’t completely hopeless… Trouble occurred when something happened with the film reel near the end of the show, which meant the organisers had to summon someone to fix the problem. I was sitting near the door to the projection booth, and I was kind of disappointed that it had to be unlocked i.e. there wasn’t a projectionist inside. I know, I know, there aren’t necessarily always projectionists inside anymore, but I like to make believe, Cinema Paradiso style, that we all live in a world of old-school cinemas. Of course, Singapore has hardly any single-screen cinemas anymore so even a two-screen cinema like Jade is old-school here.