Just as you don’t need a child artiste to make a children’s film (think Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne), a film with a child protagonist doesn’t automatically become a film for children.

Khela is more a fun film for grown-ups — the kind of unalloyed fun that springs from an adult giving in to a child’s whim and making things appear like child’s play.

But kids will enjoy Khela too. Well, most of it. For the sad and tense world of adults is always lurking close, threatening to storm the sunshine days and spoil the thrill of being on the run.

The bearded Prosenjit and the pretty Manisha Koirala in taant saris make a lovely twosome, but not all’s well in their pretty house. Ad filmmaker Prosenjit, forever lost in his dreams of making feature films, has little time for his wife and none for a child. Manisha, tired of household chores and husband-sitting, wants a baby. In the face of Prosenjit’s indifference, she even mulls divorce.

With this marital tension as the premise, Khela enters the world of an adventurous schoolboy (Akashneel Dutta Mukherjee) who agrees to be kidnapped by the desperate filmmaker looking for the right face.

The rest of Khela is made up of a carefree outing in the hills with cast, crew and camera, a cat-and-mouse game between the shooting party and cops on the trail of the missing boy, a parallel track on what’s going on in the boy’s house back in Calcutta, and flashbacks of Prosenjit-Manisha.

A churning happens within the filmmaker as he bonds with the kid and learns to nurture. Prosenjit was not off the mark when he told t2 recently that people would fall in love with this man. The Tollywood hero breathes life into this insensitive-yet-vulnerable man. Besides, Prosenjit has probably never looked better.

Manisha comes up with a wonderfully understated performance in which every word of Bengali she gives lip to (TV actress Ananya has done the dubbing) seems to come from deep within her.

Costume designer Raima, an intelligent woman familiar with the ways of the world who can speak her mind and maintain her dignity in a gang of guys, is brilliant.

But there’s no doubt who steals the show from them all — li’ champ Akashneel. His lack of selfconciousness is the best thing about him. Plus, the wonderful lines Rituparno has given him.

Sanjoy Das and Raja Narayan Deb’s music factors in both the runaway feel and the latent tension.

The weak point perhaps is the track on Akashneel’s parents, where the characterisation is a few notches below the fab four. Here’s a mother (Pushpita Mukherjee) who howls and a father (Bharat Kaul) who never really looks distraught.

Khela is indeed unlike any Rituparno film. Not just because there’s a lot of sunshine and open spaces. Not just because the story revolves around a child. Not just because life is far less complicated in this playing field. But because the curtains come down with all knots untied — all’s well that ends well. Simple or simplistic? The jury is out.

Did you like Khela? Tell t2@abpmail.com