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Kaushik Ganguly’s Just Another Love
Story, which has received critical acclaim, gives an insight into alternative sexual identities, writes
Shoma A. Chatterji
Just Another Love Story (Aar Ekti Premer Golpo) is a strikingly original film that explores alternative sexual orientations and identities across two generations. One is based on the tragic true story of Chapal Bhaduri, who plays himself in the larger film as the subject of a documentary being made within the film by a Delhi-based filmmaker Abhiroop Sen (Rituparno Ghosh), himself gay with an ongoing relationship with his cinematographer Basu (Indraneil Sengupta), who is happily married to Rani (Churni Ganguly). The film won the Special Jury Award at the Goa IFFI. Director Kaushik Ganguly says, "I chose Rituparno to play Abhiroop because he would understand the minute psychological, physical and social nuances of the character the best. He is sensitive about gays and people with homosexual orientation. He has changed the way he talks and walks for this character." Not really, Rituparno practically plays himself in the film. Raima Sen is Momo, the production assistant who functions, very unobtrusively as the balancing factor among characters, who are embroiled, in one way or another, in a quid pro quo interaction.`A0 "One member of my team, a third gender person, died young. When he died, I realised that he had died more out of loneliness than of anything else," Ganguly sums up. Abhiroop’s unconventional ways of dress, make-up and behaviour point out the difference between the openness of alternative sexual preferences today and the tragic isolation and social humiliation Chapal Bhaduri has suffered throughout his life. As Chapal begins to narrate the story of his love life and the tragic consequences thereof into the camera, Abhiroop slowly begins to identify with Chapal’s sense of alienation, loneliness and social rejection. The relationship between Abhiroop and Basu is filled with an electric tension so strong that one feels it can snap at any moment, traced back to Abhiroop’s emotional insecurity that makes him call up his mother and weep like a little boy whenever he feels helpless and also because his love for Basu has a rival hovering in the background — his wife, who arrives later to announce that she is pregnant. Says Rituparno Ghosh, who is also creative director and production designer, "Time and space collapse into each other as the chronicler (Abhiroop) assumes the persona of his subject, (Chapal) creating a virtual reality that mirrors both their lives, one from the past, another happening in the present. Similar complexities, divided loyalties weave themselves into each other and into the film and its actor/characters. The bonds of sisterhood with a lover’s suffering ‘legitimate’ wife are similar, forcing Abhiroop to question his fake liberation, and face his essential solitude as a marginal being in society." Rituparno Ghosh marvels in both personas — the director within the film and his playing out of the younger Chapal, in his fantasies offering two distanced facets — the effeminate, kohl-eyed, lipstick wearing arrogant and self-indulgent face of an openly gay man proud of his male identity, and as the younger Chapal, the woman trapped in a man’s body always dressed in beautiful Benarasi saris and jewellery with her secret lover Krishna also played by Basu. Alternative sexual orientation is a delicate subject to handle on celluloid. The process of storytelling in Aar Ekti Premer Golpo is complex because several relationships are at work through a structure that might confuse the mainstream audience and target the film at a very niche-niche audience. On the one hand, Abiroop gay himself, is making a film on another gay person with a background in theatre. Chapal was a closet gay while Abhiroop insists on wearing his effeminate identity on his sleeve. "Why are you always trying to prove a point?" asks Uday, his still photographer friend once. Chapal says that he is a woman trapped in a man’s body. Abhiroop loves his masculine identity. Chapal Bhaduri is much more than the subject of Abhiroop’s film. He is a commentary on the very process of filmmaking. He is a critique on Abhiroop, the filmmaker, who is opportunistic and voyeuristic enough to exploit the sad story to peg his own story on as Momo tells Basu in one scene. "Did the foreign lady pay me the extra cheque to reveal more dirty secrets from my past?" Chapal asks Abhiroop once, leaving the cheque behind and agreeing to shoot the last scene. The bottom line is — closeted or open, the ‘third gender’ remains alienated by the mainstream, marginalised, emotionally abused and misunderstood because they have the guts to choose and to live by their choice.
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