By SANIYA ANSARI 

A Death in The Gunj premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2016) to a packed audience, and when the Q&A is moderated by the festival director Cameron Bailey himself, you stay! In other words, it is a signal to yet another important contribution to modern Indian cinema by none other than Kolkata-born actress, Konkona Sen Sharma.
This time, from behind the camera.

In her directorial debut, Konkona reveals characters and their relationships with each other through actions and exchanges during sports, games or hangouts over luncheons, dinners and post-dinner soirees. Five friends, an 8-year-old and her grandparents go to McCluskie ganj, in Jharkhand, an Anglo-Indian cantonment area with a church and a graveyard hidden in tall grass surrounding a colonial cottage with several bedrooms that opens to a verandah for long lazy afternoons. ‘70s wardrobe compliments this setting and helps you safely imagine what it would be if you were transported into that time zone with flared bell-bottoms, wide collars, rose coloured sun glasses and floral print saris. Everything else about the story, though, seems like it is happening now.
And if you are in any denial that you and your friends are above it all, politically way more sophisticated and therefore, no way close to the characters represented on celluloid, hold your breath, Konkona’s direction cuts closely.

Setting the case for the acutely, socially awkward protagonist Shutu (Vikrant Massey), scene after scene is built upon events that keep isolating the weakest. Amidst weird sexual tensions, benign game playing and infidelities, it is little too late before you realize that someone in the room has been deeply affected by it all. Konkona writes human characters in situations where they are faced with extreme fear, joy, fright or disappointment revealing moments of losing complete control and then recovering. Another parallel track between husband and wife, Nandu and Bonnie, played by Gulshan Devaiah and Tillotama Shome further emphasizes this when their 8-year-old goes missing one afternoon. Blinded by their parental concern, all fingers unfairly point at the group’s social outcast, Shutu. Even the young girl who was once deeply fond of Shutu stops speaking to him, and it’s accepted as the natural outcome.

Vikram (Ranvir Shorey), a newly married husband to a trophy bride, and love interest to Mitali (Kalki Koechlin) — the ‘loose’ vamp because she’s more Anglo than Indian – is memorable for being quite the monster, and his sheer audacity to contradict every rule about being a civilized male. He squarely represents a masculinity that, in today’s world, would be frowned upon whether you belong to that class of proper upbringing or not.

It’s not that Vikram is in love with two women at the same time that shocks and moves us. We are horrified by the typical social judgment depicted by each woman, with the underlying message that fighting ideas of purity and virtue don’t necessarily lead to freedom if all we aim to attain is power. Konkona doesn’t offer any clear choices; she only shows us the different sides and consequences of each character’s action. In that way, she holds the viewer in court: Would you do this? Is this feminism? Is this friendship? Is it only about the ugliness of (Indian) male behaviour?
Because for all her modernity, Mitali’s exploration of revenge sex to get back at Vikram, to free herself of god-forbid any constrain, has nothing but devastating effects. No matter which angle you see it from, the madness of Vikram’s behaviour or Mitali’s aloofness hits home when Shutu, driven by his inner turmoil and feelings of isolation, inferiority and inadequacy, strikes a telling blow.

Konkona eventually strikes a delicate balance between showing us a story from a distance so rooted in time and place, that you can’t help but feel its familiarity; its difficult to resist the feeling that the film is in fact about the audience, even as you cringe uncomfortably because of the way it ends.

Saniya Ansari is a scriptwriter, producer, and theatre arts educator.