A schizophrenic girl Meethi (Konkona Sen Sharma) keeps searching for an imaginary address ? 15 Park Avenue ? where she believes she lives with her husband (former boyfriend Jojo, played by Rahul Bose) and five children. Trying to hold Meethi?s ever-disintegrating life together, step-sister Anu (Shabana Azmi) loses track of her own life. As the real and unreal worlds collide, Jojo and Meethi come together again to search for her world. The English film is directed by Aparna Sen.

Though the film meanders through the first half, it picks up pace and the drama gets gripping after the interval. A guilt-ridden Jojo walking into Meethi?s alien world, a lonely Anu drifting closer to Meethi?s psychiatrist (Dhritiman Chatterji), a bewildered Lakshmi (Shefali Shah) finding her perfect world crumbling ? some of the moments that mirror directorial magic.

Shabana and Konkona lead an entire ensemble of top-grade performances from Rahul, Shefali, Dhritiman and Kanwaljit Singh. Shabana stands out, revealing the various shades of her character ? domineering yet caring, harsh yet self-sacrificing enough to put her personal life on hold.

The cinematography by Hemant Chaturvedi is captivating. The virgin locations of Paro and Thimpu are captured beautifully with the bare trees in the background and foreground, visualising the mental meshwork that Meethi and Jojo keep walking through.

If this was any other director, we would have termed the effort extraordinary. But from Sen, the expectations are greater. 36 Chowringhee Lane remains her best because of the economy of presentment and subtlety of craft. Unfortunately, 15 Park Avenue is verbose, in audio and in visual. It says and it shows too much, possibly in an effort to educate an audience unexposed to the realities of a schizophrenic?s unreal world.

The script, with a heavy dose of matters medical, doesn?t allow us to completely enter Meethi?s mind and her world, or allow Meethi to take us along in her search for 15 Park Avenue.

Last word: 15 Park Avenue is a must watch, for the subject that Sen deals with and the performance she extracts from her actors.