15 Park Avenue

Director: Aparna Sen
Cast: Shabana Azmi, Konkona Sensharma, Rahul Bose, Shefali Shah, Kanwaljit Singh, Dhritiman Chatterjee, Soumitra Chatterjee, Waheeda Rehman

8/10

If a frail girl called Meethi, with large innocent eyes, deeply sunk, in her search for 15 Park Avenue knocked open some doors in your life you thought you had shut forever, or thought you could, it’s Konkona’s power-packed performance you should thank for reminding you that some doors never can be, and never should be, shut.

If they could be, Rahul Bose wouldn’t have to return to Meethi’s world again, 11 years after he had deserted her raped and alone in her trauma, lapsing deeper and deeper into her schizophrenic existence. If they could be, Aparna Sen wouldn’t have to rake up a painful family history to make 15 Park Avenue, on a theme almost completely ignored in Indian cinema. If they could be, the look of betrayal in Konkona’s eyes, as her family allows her to be taken away to a home for special people, wouldn’t have kept us awake and restless all night, haunted by their desperate appeals for help, to be accepted and believed.

If in her eyes, her fear, her world of an imagined husband and five children, her flitting from one job to another, her insecurity and need to live up to her near ones’ expectations, you have recognised a bit of yourself, it’s not surprising. There’s a Meethi in most of us. Forever on the run, with nowhere really to go, but convinced like Meethi that there’s a 15 Park Avenue waiting for us somewhere, and we have to find it.

With Meethi on her search is her half-sister, Shabana, in one of her many brilliant roles in her career. The only one who has the strength to take responsibility, where all others have chickened out or remained mute spectators, including their mother, Waheeda Rehman, sadly not given enough space to make an impression in a comeback role.

The men are weak or cowards. A Soumitra who quietly watches his daughter being dragged away, a brother who thinks Meethi should have been left at the Home, a Kanwaljit as Shabana’s boyfriend, whose main concern is they should move on with life and opportunities, and when Shabana doesn’t, he does, and a Rahul, who admits he was “not man enough” to handle the challenge. Against them all stands Shabana, towering in her strength and performance, as a woman who has put her life on hold, as vulnerable and lonely as Meethi herself, beneath the mask of being in charge, which actually Meethi comes to fear. It is through her we come closer to Meethi and so good are they together, that the scenes without them, especially between Rahul and his wife Shefali, seem rather long-drawn and a bit forced, as do the scenes of Shabana with Kanwaljit and Dhritiman. The acting is fine, but somehow it remains acting.

It’s just as well that Aparna didn’t distract us with stylistic and narrative gimmicks. It’s a very complex tale told simple and straight, almost docu-style at moments. With an ending that may seem flighty and confusing to some, a bit abrupt and too open-ended to others, is actually just fine. The message is Meethi, and Meethi alone, and we do get it very clearly.

Deepali Singh