Memories in the Mist
3BACK
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Review by Steve Gravestock of the Toronto International Film Festival

Memories in the Mist, Bengali master Buddhadeb Dasgupta's most recent work, is part ghost story, part domestic drama, and part social satire. Much like A Tale of a Naughty Girl and Chased By Dreams, the film is distinguished by an elegiac, dream-like atmosphere where the past and present commingle and play off one another.  
 
The film focuses on office clerk Sumanta (Rahul Bose) as he struggles with a failing career and memories of his powerful and influential father (Mithun Chakravarty). Meanwhile, his ambitious and grasping wife Supriya (Sumeera Reddy) has suddenly become a celebrity because of her best-selling travel books despite the fact that she has little or no first hand experience of the places she's writing about. (Her first, about Paris, is based on a video she rented.)  
 
Though Dasgupta contrasts the values of Sumanta's father and his generation with the modish, trendy currents of contemporary culture, he's far too wise to indulge in mere nostalgia. Dasgupta links the hypocrisies of previous generations (his father had a mistress which deeply divided the household) to the vagaries of contemporary culture.  
 
The present may be driven by appearance and influence peddling, but it's not a new development ; it's just more overt. As with all of Dasgupta's films, Memories in the Mist is exquisitely crafted. Dasgupta's beautiful and elaborate soundscape (particularly in the early elliptical sequences) creates a profound sense of mystery which is simultaneously personal and, somehow, expansive. He marries this with a biting satirical sensibility.  
 
The central performances, by a trio of actors from varied backgrounds, are uniformly excellent, a feat which seems even more astonishing when one considers the wide variety of tones in the film ranging from domestic drama and reminiscence to comedy. (Bose is one of the leaders of the parallel cinema movement, arguably India's most influential and independent group of filmmakers, while Reddy is one of India's biggest commercial starlets.)  
 
Memories in the Mist shows one of the most intriguing and skillful artists working at the peak of his powers.