Four years back when my first film was about to release, more than being curious about how the film would turn out to be, everyone around would chuckle and ask me: “Who’s going to review your film?” In the run-up to the release of Shaheb Bibi Golaam, the same question is popping up again and some are even suggesting that I should review the film myself!

That is kind of flattering but I would never like to go dissecting something I have made. The film is now out there for all of you to see and it’s time for me to trust your judgement. But the journalist in me would really like to ask a few questions to the filmmaker in me. Questions others don’t ask. Maybe they don’t want to be rude. Or they just don’t care.

Your first film Paanch Adhyay didn’t make it to the top festivals, nor did it set the box office on fire. What went wrong?
I should have waited. I had been running around with my first script, a thriller, for the longest time and was desperate to make my first film. And in that desperation I ended up making an altogether different script, a romance, with a part of the cast being forced upon me. I also fell into all the trappings of a first-time filmmaker — self-indulgence, references to favourite films and filmmakers, et al. The movie did find an audience but it was a little too niche. Now, you can’t make your first film a second time. And that will remain my biggest regret.

What were you doing these four years? Was no one ready to fund you all this while?
Incredibly, there was. But again they were dictating the cast and this time I resisted. I wanted to start from scratch. In 2013, I made a short film for Rs 50,000, requesting my friends to work on it for free. I applied everything I had learnt on the job during Paanch Adhyay. That became 8 to 8, one of the segments from the anthology film X: Past is Present, which made it to some of the top short film festivals of the world.

I was also writing Shaheb Bibi Golaam and that took a lot of time and a lot of drafts.

You shifted to Mumbai during this period. You made a film with actors from Mumbai when you were living in Calcutta. And now you’ve made a film with actors from Calcutta when you are staying in Mumbai....
That’s another thing I learnt from my first film — cast actors who are comfortable with the language, who understand the lines they are saying. I primarily do my casting on the basis of look. I believe if an actor looks the part, half the job is done. But this time I also wanted to work with actors whose work I have admired over the years. Even for characters who have just one or two scenes in the film, I have picked veterans like Sohag Sen, Arun Mukhopadhyay and Sumanta Mukherjee. They bring so much in so little. You have to see to believe it.

Where did you get the idea of a thriller involving an Anglo-Indian contract killer, a middle-class housewife and a Muslim taxi driver?
There were three different images that used to haunt me. One of a musician at a nightclub going and killing a man in the restroom during the interlude of a song. Two, a repressed housewife crying away in the bathroom hoping the water from the shower would drown her howling. And three, a taxi driver looking into his rear-view mirror at the girl in his back seat lying drunk after a late-night party.

In my capacity as a journalist I have learnt not to hold back any story for another day and if you have the interviews of Aamir, Salman and Shah Rukh ready with you, to go ahead and publish them together the very next day. I applied that theory in my scripting and suddenly Jimmy, Jaya and Javed were waltzing in harmony in the same space and kicking some serious ass. 

Before the world starts choosing their favourites amongst Shaheb, Bibi and Golaam, rank the best performance — Anjan Dutt, Swastika Mukherjee or Ritwick Chakraborty?
If I had watched the film just once, I might have answered that question. But with every viewing, and I’ve had a few hundred of those, my pick changes. Sometimes I walk out of the edit room with the Dutt swagger, sometimes I cannot get the Swastika look of steely resolve out of my head, and sometimes I just want to jump inside the screen and give Ritwick a big hug. If there are three people watching the film, you’ll get three different answers to that question and that perhaps is my greatest joy as the director of Shaheb Bibi Golaam.

With so much in your kitty, why do you have to sell sex to get audiences in?
An Indian woman’s right to sex is one of the major themes of the film. I used to visit Rituda (Rituparno Ghosh) very often in his last few years and one thing he used to tell me quite often was that a woman’s right to sex would be one of the biggest talking points the world over in the coming years. That’s something which stayed with me.

I was also very interested in exploring the difference between sexual empowerment and sexual objectification in our society. How Bibi uses her body for gain and still feels liberated because she is calling the shots, while another woman just walking on the street can feel completely violated by how she is being looked at. This dichotomy is woven into the plot without making it an agenda film.

What are songs doing in a thriller?
I cannot imagine making a film without songs. I love using songs to take the narrative forward. Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Parinda recipe of making The Godfather and The Sound of Music in the same film is too tempting! Also, after you’ve watched a film, the songs help create the lingering effect that remind you of the images and the overall experience you’ve had. Anupam’s (Roy) Mon bhalo nei is that secret weapon!

Senior citizens and family audiences have flocked to watch the two big Tolly successes in recent times — Bela Sheshe and Praktan. Will they come in to watch an adult thriller?
The maximum movie-going audiences the world over is between 18 and 35. Now, people in that age group in this part of the world prefer to watch Bollywood over Bangla films. Maybe they have been disappointed with Bengali films and they miss the sleekness or scale. I hope they give Shaheb Bibi Golaam a chance.

Some of the best actors in the industry, the censor controversy, the erotic content, the chartbusting music... which is that one reason you want the audiences to come and watch Shaheb Bibi Golaam for?
Every Friday morning when I go to watch a new film, I have many things about the film playing on my mind. But when the lights finally go out, my mind goes numb. At that point, it doesn’t matter anymore who’s in the film, who’s directed it, what news it had made, what reviews had trickled out. It’s just me and the movie then. And that’s how it should be in that dark theatre — Shaheb Bibi Golaam and You.  Start picture...

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