The world premiere of Ghosh's Antarmahal was today.
The film is well shot and looks better than the usual digital jobs from Bollywood (and some Hollywood) because it's not using a DI. The film is dark with very few bright shots.
The first half hour was very slow and boring to me (you need a good Bengali background to understand the film fully which I don't have at all).
But then things got more interesting and occasionally quite funny and dramatic.
The cast is good. Everybody fits in.
Some spoilers following.
Jackie Shroff plays a rich Hindu man with two women and a mistress. The first woman gave him no heir so a second was brought in after 12 years. So far no success either (e.g. the man is infertile). Shroff spends half of the film lying in bed copulating with his second wife. Don't get any wrong ideas, though. This passed the Indian censors and is visually tame.
With no child in sight a priest is brought in to read holy scriptures while the pair copulates. That leads to a very funny scene with the priest reciting behind a curtain, the couple in bed, and the first wife coming in to sabotage the proceedings by seducing the priest exposing herself.
Apart from that there is not much to smile about, though, as the women have a hard time with their role in the household and society back then (1870s). Abhishek plays a sculptor hired to create a Durga statue with the head of Queen Victoria. When the statue is finally finished and revealed in public the film finds its striking conclusion.
A normal Bengali film according to Ghosh, but art house for the rest of the country. Commercial prospects outside of Bengal and India are slim, but this is a pretty good film which might win an award here.
See it if you like Bengali culture and cinema. Produced by Jaya Bachchan who was present.

Thank You for your review. This one sounds right-up-my-ally , esp. since i "sense" a level of dark humour in this one.

In all honesty i have only seen Choker Bali & RainCoat ( I own Utsav but yet to see it) and so far he has not impressed me much - charecters usually seem to be "shallow" in treatment, that said - i think he is the only person in india bold enough to tackle the inherently complex issue of sexuality among indian women and that alone i think is worth seeing.

Heres hoping for a decent dvd release

I agree to a certain extent, but at times, I feel he deviates off the main point of the film to concentrate on sex (one of the extra marital affairs in Shubho Mahurat is a prime example - can't remember the names of the characters). I also feel that he is too star-orientated - he has made a Bengali film with the two leading men from the Hindi film industry - there are plenty of decent artists in Bengal who could have been used.

Anyway, is there any news of an international distributor picking this up? I would be interested to see it, see how Ghosh uses his humour.

Watch it now....it really is very well written and directed. The best of whatever I have seen from him yet(including RAINCOAT and CHOKER BALI)

Wow. Can't wait.

Thanks - i will over the weekend , can never ignore a recommendation from a zulmi

Just wondering whether there is a release date for this yet? Can't seem to find much info on the web about it. I'm off to Calcutta in October, was thinking of catching it then.