15, Park Avenue

Infobox_Film
name =15, Park Avenue


imdb_id = 0449159
director =Aparna Sen
producer =Bipin Vohra
writer =Aparna Sen
starring =Konkona Sen Sharma,
Shabana Azmi,
Soumitra Chatterjee,
Waheeda Rehman,
Dhritiman Chatterjee,
Rahul Bose,
Kanwaljeet Singh
distributor =
released =2005
runtime = 116 min.
language =English
budget = Rs 2.5 [crores] (approx. $556,000

"15 Park Avenue" is a 2005 film made by the Bengali director Aparna Sen.

ynopsis

The film is the story of the relationship between a girl, Meethi, (Konkona Sen Sharma) who suffers from schizophrenia, and her sister Anjali (Shabana Azmi).Meethi (short for Mitali) hails from an upper middle class family, fraught with a complex relationship structure. She is the child through the second marriage of her mother, and this is not explored in much detail in the movie since it focuses on other issues. Anu, her older sister, is a professor of physics at a university, who is shown to be intellectual and practical; however, the paradox in her character becomes obvious when she decides to forsake her personal life for her ailing younger sister. This shows her in a different light, and the viewer must face the contradiction throughout the movie. Meethi is shown to have dormant schizophrenic traits since childhood, as depicted in the scene where Anu tells her doctor Kunal Barva (Dhritiman Chatterjee) that Meethi had always been a loner. One observation is that Meethi fears everyone can hear her swallowing or gulping and so is embarrassed to go to school. Anu believes that a traumatic gang rape by political goons during Meethi's work assignment has pushed Meethi over the edge and has led to the onset of full-blown schizophrenia. She lapses into incoherent delusions about a happy family and children which have been her erstwhile dreams, while in reality, her fiance Jojo (Rahul Bose) backs out from the relationship. Clutching on to these straws, she desperately looks for her home 15 Park Avenue, where she feels she will be at peace. A chance meeting with her ex-fiance (Jojo) 11 years after they broke up, gives Meethi a further impetus into her delusional world, as she touchingly trusts him to look for her home and now he is an outsider whom she does not recognise. For Meethi, the world is divided into her imaginary home and the outsiders, who keep her from going to her "family".

Guilt is a predominant colour in the landscape of this movie, depicted in the persona of every character, be it Anu, Joydeep or Mrs.Mathur (Waheeda Rehman). Logical or illogical it is in the background of this tale of reality, illusion and the thin line between the two.

Cast

*Konkona Sen Sharma as Meethi
*Shabana Azmi as Anjali
*Soumitra Chatterjee as Meethi's father
*Waheeda Rehman as Meethi's and Anjali's mother
*Rahul Bose as Joydeep Roy
*Dhritiman Chaterji as Dr. Kunal Barwa
* Kanwaljeet Singh as Anjali's colleague and boyfriend.

External links

* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449159/ IMDb page]