Best Friend

Rating:**

Even if Best Friend had not been premiered on the second day of the 17th KFF,it would have flopped. Tarun Bhattacharya’s maiden production Best Friend is a rather sad reflection of the directorial capabilities of veteran Swapan Saha. He was once a quickie director who churned out one hit after another within the span of one year.

Of late however,he seems to have lost his grip over the medium of cinema on the one hand and on his mass audience on the other. Best Friend is the best example. It is the story of three friends,so the singular in the title is confusing to begin with. After a few minutes into the film,you realise that the grammatical error in the title does not really matter because the film has nothing good to say about friendship.

Three young men,friends since childhood,though belonging to different backgrounds,are as thick as thieves. But they are unemployed. In their efforts to avoid a sticky situation at home,they land at the flat of one friend’s uncle at Digha. One friend’s sister is madly in love with Konko,one of the other two friends,but he does not reciprocate because he believes that falling in love with a friend’s sister is violating the values of friendship! Some value,this!

The film is divided into two parts. In the first half,you have to bear with the very un-comic antics of the boy’s uncle as he goes about his painting contract with his team of idiots and breaks everything that comes his way. The second half concentrates on the twists,turns and tangles in the love story of one of the friends and the friendship between the three boys. Priyanka Sarkar and Sujoy are the only two,who are a relief in this terrible film. Ashok Bhadra’s music,Gautam Susmit’s lyrics,Kushal Chowdhury’s cinematography and Suresh Urs’ editing can do nothing to redeem this hopeless waste of time,energy and investment of human and financial capital on celluloid.

Rating: Two stars are reserved for Priyanka Sarkar and Sujoy for trying to pull the film out of the debris.