Amodini (1994)

Noted critic Das Gupta’s comedy is set in the 18th C. when Calcutta was being built and inviolable norms of Brahmin social hierarchy often led to absurd situations, e.g. when uppercaste brides, who could not marry below their class, ended up marrying infants or muchmarried males trading on their eligibility. The irascible Amodini, daughter of a Kulin Brahmin landlord, is forced to marry a servant in her house when her scheduled groom abandons her in favour of a more lucrative alliance. She promptly kicks the servant boy Pundu out of her house as soon as the rites are over. The servant moves to Calcutta (then Sultanuti) and returns years later having made his fortune in the British colonial economy, considerably wealthier than his former employers. Amodini, determined to get him back, unburdens her troubles to Pundu’s latest wife and the threesome live happily ever after. Unlike the later films of Das Gupta’s mentor Satyajit Ray, the plot itself becomes secondary to innovative camerawork, often using minimal light and high-speed stock, and to stylised references to popular Bengali artforms.