INTERIOR CAFÉ - NIGHT: Of Love Lost and Regained

 

SHORT FILM REVIEW

Ronita Torcato

 

INTERIOR CAFÉ - NIGHT

 

 

Cast:Naseeruddin Shah,Shernaz Patel,Naveen Kasturia,Shweta Basu Prasad

 

Director: Adhiraj Bose

 

This short 12 minute feature which can currently be viewed online (a la Netflix) pursues parallel plots inside a Kolkata café. Oh, Kolkata! Hub of intellectual discourse fuelling Marxist rebellion, the cafe is now the setting of a love story.Two,actually; both fleshed out by strong performers, one by a pair of veterans, the other by a young duo. That many splendored thing called love connects the two storylines in ways unbeknownst to the characters.  

 

Naseeruddin Shah essays the café owner who encounters an old love, his true love (Shernaz Patel) after a 30-year gap. They say nothing happens by chance and she has ventured into the cafe on the last night of her stay in the city. The past is rekindled as the two sally down memory lane recalling the time they were forced to separate. (He never married;she migrated to the UK, married someone else) Even as enduring love between grey haired eminences warmed the cockles of your reviewer's heart, the pain and heartbreak of young lovers, Kasturia and a weepy Prasad who is relocating, a la Patel, brough to mind the old saw about history repeating itself. Or more to the point,everything and everyone is inter-connected; experiencing and sharing in joy and sorrow. Will distance then lend enchantment? Will the geographical gulf take its toll long-distance? will young love stay the course as it has in the case of the older pair who have been given a second chance? we can only hope.

 

Bose whose bio includes work for All India Bakchod, co-wrote this sensitive short with Sainee Raj who acted in Traffic Signal and the TV series Shaka Laka Boom Boom. Santhana Krishnan Ravichandran shot the globally acclaimed,award winning film which is powered by fine performances from renowned vets Shah and Patel and the young ones too ( it may be mentioned that Kasturia acted in Sulemani Keeda and the popular web series, TVF Pitchers while Prasad worked in Telugu,Tamil and Bengali cinema)

Interior Cafe-Night has won several national and international awards and was the  official selection in 22 festivals around the world (including the Chicago South Asian Film Festival and the Indian Film Festival of Stuttgart)