Bhaskar Chattopadhyay/Firstpost.com

Hyperlink cinema seems to be the flavour of the season in the Bengali film industry these days. First, there was Pratim D. Gupta’s Ahare Mon. And now, Birsa Dasgupta gives us his new film Crisscross – a movie whose very title gives us the essence of interconnecting storylines. And while Dasgupta’s film is competently made, and remains a decently watchable film throughout, its principal flaw lies in the fact that the interconnections seem far too convenient and forced for our viewing comfort. Which is sad, because the film has some terrific performances by a motley group of Bengali cinema’s contemporary posse of talented actresses.
Crisscross is primarily the story of five women from various walks of life. They all live in the city of Kolkata, and none of them are happy. Suzy (Priyanka Sarkar) is a freelance graphic designer who just can’t seem to get work, or in the rare occasion when she does, never gets paid on time. She is a single mother with a drug-addict ex-husband, trying to put food on the table and giving her son a good education, even as the wolves and vultures keep circling her day and night. Meher (Nusrat Jahan) is an aspiring actress trying to remain afloat by doing bit roles here and there, auditioning for good roles and getting humiliated on a daily basis. She has a widowed mother and a sickly brother to take care of, but the money just doesn’t seem to come in. Miss Sen (Jaya Ahsan) is a successful independent businesswoman who seems to be ruthless in her career ambitions – so much so that she has separated from her husband and her daughter. However, her business is weathering a storm, and she has been making some wrong moves, until a shocking revelation explains why. Rupa (Sohini Sarkar) is a timid middle-class housewife who is constantly abused by her in-laws. While her mother-in-law blames her for not being able to conceive, her husband is always bickering at her. To make matters worse, there’s this slimy good-for-nothing brother-in-law, who keeps abusing her mentally and physically by making direct sexual advances. Rupa bears it all, until one day, when she learns that she has a terminal disease. Finally, there’s Ira (Mimi Chakraborty) a successful and independent photojournalist, who struggles to strike a balance between her career and a caring but priority-demanding boyfriend who wants to marry her. The stories of each of these women run crisscross, intersecting each other, and in one way or another, affecting each other.
What really worked for me in the film are the performances. Each lady puts in a brilliant act, and their fears, anxieties, grief and insecurities came across beautifully. I must give credit to director Birsa Dasgupta for having extracted such layered performances from his leading ladies. While it would not be fair to rank the performances, I can’t help but mention Sohini Sarkar’s nuanced act as the abused homemaker Rupa as the one I found myself invested in the most – which is a big surprise, because I have not liked Sarkar’s recent roles at all. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself tearing up in an emotional scene involving a dress her character aspires to put on – a simple and yet unattainable desire that so many housewives will identify with.
Both Priyanka Sarkar and Nusrat Jahan are fantastic in their respective roles, and their struggle – though identical in many ways – is the modern woman’s war, that has shifted from the confines of the bedroom to the workplace. Ira comes across as the strongest of all the five women, but deep down, she is under immense stress too – under that constant burden of expectations that any modern, independent career-woman will so easily identify with. The feeling of guilt – of not doing enough for a man who is willing to wait for her – seems to remain as a constant obstacle before her, one that does not let her achieve her true potential. Although I found Mimi Chakraborty’s dialogues quite artificial and poorly written, her acting left me wanting to see more of her, simply because with a well-paying job, an understanding boss, a loving mother and a caring boyfriend, her life seems perfect in all aspects – but is yet far from being so.
Jaya Ahsan plays the successful and affluent businesswoman with conviction, and it is tragic to watch her descend into a world of clumsy errors and bad business decisions. What is even more tragic is to learn why her mind is not in her work and why she is the ruthless and insensitive person that she is. I only wish Ahsan would work a little more on her dialogue delivery though, which sometimes comes across as too contrived for the cinema of these days. But I have not a shred of doubt in my mind that she is an excellent actress.
As far as the overall film is concerned, it is undoubtedly a good one. There are certain things which I did not like in the writing. For one, the film seems to go on and on about the problems of its five protagonists, and to be honest, after a while, it began to test my patience, because the story was not going anywhere. The director was saying the same thing over and over again. And this is exactly why, when he does offer a resolution, it seems all too abrupt, forced and a bit too much of a coincidence. The element of pleasant surprise was missing. The ‘look’ of the film was also a bit too glossy, especially because the protagonists – some of whom were struggling to put food on the table – looked all to glammed up. While this could be a ‘urban poor’ phenomenon, it is undeniably true that the makers may have overdone this bit. The film’s music is quite good and in the scenes when the homemaker finally witnesses true freedom, I found the music lifting the scenes up to a whole new level.
Although it could have been made better, Crisscross is an important film about what it takes and how it feels to be a woman in the modern world – a world in which, after hundreds of years of oppression, a woman can supposedly live and breathe free. But as they say, the more things change, the more they remain the same.