Sunil Gangopadhyay’s poetry, a fling with an ex-flame, some steamy scenes and a publicity blitz to match… Subrata Sen’s Hothat Neerar Jonnyo has packed in quite a few punches. A sneak peek into the rough cut of the film revealed some fizz and lots of firsts.
The author’s take:
“When Subrata came to discuss the idea with me I had insisted that Neera be left to the imagination. There was no need to show her in flesh and blood,” says writer Sunil Gangopadhyay. “So, they have used the poetry to conceptualise Rani, the heroine in one of my short stories Rani O Abinash, on which the film is based... I had written the story at a very young age.”
Hothat Neerar Jonnyo takes off from where Gangopadhyay’s story of dissatisfaction in a man-woman relationship ends. “I haven’t read the script and I am curious about the film. I would like to catch the premiere if possible,” he adds.
The director’s cut:
“I have long been toying with the idea of doing a film on one of Sunilda’s works,” says Subrata Sen about his fourth film that weaves in the concept of Neera, the fictive female character on whom Gangopadhyay has penned a series of poems.
“Neera is like Banalata Sen; she encapsulates the poet’s image of the quintessential woman... Lots of films have been made on the theme of unfaithfulness in a relationship, Indecent Proposal, Unfaithful... The novelty of Hothat Neerar Jonnyo lies in the conflict of two perspectives,” adds Sen, having wrapped up the film in a start-to-finish 19-day shoot last winter.
The main man:
“I have never acted before, not even in a college drama and had some trepidation on the first day of the shoot,” admits Bikram Ghosh, who is foraying into filmdom as the leading man in Hothat Neerar Jonnyo. The bohemian look, the footloose feel, the glib talk and a way with clothes have helped the tabla exponent put more than a bit of himself into Abinash.
“But I have no plans of taking up acting as a full-time career,” says Bikram, who has also scored the film’s soundtrack.
The audio album is a standalone product brought out by Sa Re Ga Ma, featuring six songs by Srikanta Acharya, Indranil Sen, Prateek Chowdhury and Raghab Chatterjee, among others. “The songs visualise Neera from a male perspective. So, there is no female singer,” he adds.
The leading lady:
“My role has a lot of depth and portraying the conflict in an ordinary woman was challenging. But there were some bold scenes and I was a little jittery about doing them,” confesses Jaya Seal (in picture left), into her third Bengali film after Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Uttara and Probhat Roy’s Shesh Thikana. “The workshop with Sohag Sen helped me shed my discomfort and shooting turned out to be one great picnic,” says the Bengali girl, reared in Guwahati and settled in Mumbai for the past seven years.
Money talk:
“The film has two pivotal hooks — the Sunil Gangopadhyay factor, which will attract a whole generation that thrived on the Neera poems, and the Bikram Ghosh-Subrata Sen combo, which has a non-conformist shade and will pull in the youth,” hopes Kanchan Datta. His five-year-old advertising agency, Inner Circle, has pumped in about Rs 65 lakh to enter Tollywood with Hothat Neerar Jonnyo. Of this, the publicity blitz itself has eaten up a solid chunk of Rs 20 lakh.
“Our campaign has the look of a Kal Ho Naa Ho promo. I wanted our campaigns to be right up there,” claims Datta, who has already flooded the city streets with teaser ads. Sample this: ‘Shorir jokhon moner kotha bole...’
A lot more is in the offing — 42 billboards, 350 kiosks, trailers on TV and FM channels, college promos, T-shirts, caps and on-line publicity — before the film hits Priya, Globe, Mitra, Jaya, INOX and Swabhumi on July 9.
— Reshmi Sengupta