Abir Chatterjee, Mimi Chakraborty’s Alaap Is A Cosy Little Gem

abir chatterjee, mimi chakraborty’s alaap is a cosy little gem

Director Premendu Bikash Chaki’s Alaap in Bengali starts off as a breezy rom-com about the housing problem in the metro. Unknowing to one another Pablo Mazumdar (AM) and Aditi Mitra (AM) share a flat in Kolkata, but never run into each other, as she works day shifts and he works night shifts.

AM and PM, get it?

Initially, I found the whole rom-com concept to be gimmicky. Also, the quips and backchats flowed like WhatsApp messages rather than real conversations.

But then, there is the chemistry between the lead pair. Abir Chatterjee and Mimi Chakraborty share some genuinely cosy vibes. Ironically they are not together in the film till the very end, not physically at least, which makes their onscreen compatibility more an idea than the reality.

The entire post-mid-section explores the question of whether one can fall in love with a person without spending actual time together. This theme was sensitively explored in Shoojit Sircar’s October. In Alaap (before seeing the film I thought it was a film about musicians) the intersection where yin meets yang is seen to be intriguingly elusive.

As one of the borderline-cheesy songs, “You are Ali Akbar (Khan) I am Ravi Shankar…You are fever I am paracetamol.”

Okay, Gulzar would have expressed it better. This one wants to let the young viewer know about the poetry of everyday life. I wish Alaap had higher aspirations. As it stands, it contains the seeds of an uncommon love story about two people who never meet, but also never get past the checkpoint where love takes off in search of unexplored pastures.

There are characters of convenience, like a best friend each for Pablo and Aditi as sounding boards. The North Indian Hindi-speaking house broker Sukhilal (played by Rohit Grover) is so politely tokenized he could well be the poster boy for cultural inclusiveness in Bengali cinema.

Or that single old lady across the hallway who keeps bumping into Pablo and Aditi wondering if they are single or together. These are screenplay strategies that instil a tone of turgidity to what is otherwise a refreshing take on the concept of unfulfilled love.

It is the post-interval section that hits all the high notes without getting shrill. A third angle to the Aditi-Pablo alliance shows up. Swatilekha (played with comforting serenity by Swastika Dutta) is the Other Woman in a phantom triangle, a togetherness between two AM-PM souls, that never was.

Abir Chatterjee handles his love-stricken character capably. That anxious rapid-blinking of the eye is a clever innovation. Mimi Chakraborty is beautiful, and she never lets us forget it.

Alaap is a film with its flaws, none fatal. There is a texture of tenability about this tale of fugitive love, like the scent of a woman that Pablo smells in the cushion.