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On the fast lane, brick by brick
The world is slowly but surely opening up for the NSD-trained Tannishtha Chatterjee, writes Saibal Chatterjee.
France, Germany, and now the United Kingdom: the world is slowly but surely opening up for the NSD-trained Tannishtha Chatterjee.
When she was adjudged the Best Actress at Osian’s Cinefan – 8th Festival of Asian Cinema in July for her performance as a high-society hooker in Subrata Sen’s Bengali-language film, Bibar, Tannishtha was away in London, fleshing out the lead role in an independent British screen adaptation of Monica Ali’s bestselling novel, Brick Lane.
The Channel Four-Film Council of UK co-production, which is tentatively titled Seven Seas and is directed by debutante Sarah Gavron, is the third international feature of Tannishtha’s nascent but already eventful acting career.
Tannishtha has also played lead roles in Partha Sengupta’s Indo-French Hawa Aaney Dey and the German-made Shadows of Time. “The British film,” Tannishtha reveals, “is now in post-production and is likely to be ready for distribution early next year.”
The shoot, she adds, took over two months, and that was preceded by a four-week workshop that was conducted to help the cast members familiarise themselves with the nuances of the Bangladeshi expatriate community that Monica Ali’s novel depicts.
Brick Lane is the story of a 17-year-old rustic, unlettered, middle class Bangladeshi girl who lands in England as the bride of Chanu, a Londoner who is 20 years older.
The storyline follows Nazneen’s growth all the way up to the age of 35, by which time she, a mother of three children, is ready for full-fledged independence from the two men in her life, the other being Karim, a young Muslim radical the female protagonist has an adulterous affair with.
The screen adaptation deviates from the novel only to the extent of incorporating political issues of contemporary relevance. Says Tannishtha: “The film paints a portrait of the post-9/11 world through a deeply human story.”
The Brick Lane adaptation has been produced by Alison Owen of Ruby Films, whose credits include big-ticket releases like Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth, John Madden’s Proof, inspired by the life of mathematician John Nash, and Christine Jeff’s Sylvia, which delves into the tumultuous relationship between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
Tannishtha’s co-stars in the film are Satish Kaushik as Chanu and Christopher Simpson as Karim. Simpson is a non-Asian actor who is often seen in British cinema and television playing characters of subcontinental origin.
“It really helps when you work with such fine co-actors,” says Tannishtha. “Our characters evolved through constant discussion all the way through the shoot. When you have committed actors around you, you are forced to raise your own bar.”
“I landed the role of Brick Lane’s Nazneen after three rounds of screen tests,” says Tannishtha. That indeed was also the route that fetched her the lead role in the cross-generational love saga, Shadows of Time, a Bengali film crafted by Oscar-winning German director, Florian Gallenberger.
Shadows of Time, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival last year, is now ready for release in India. It will hit screens in Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai on September 8.
Tannishtha, who divides her time between New Delhi and Mumbai, has built up a fair following in Kolkata, thanks to the commercial and critical success of Bibar, an adaptation of a controversial 1970s novel authored by Samaresh Basu.
She is understandably keen to extend her Kolkata connection, but the roles that she is being offered in Bengali films in the wake of Bibar make the standard demand on her to reproduce the insouciant sexuality that her character in the Subrata Sen film exudes. Tannishtha is no mood to fall into that constricting image trap. After all the whole wide world of cinema seems to be beckoning her.
