Arquivo

Based on a short story by Bengali writer Prafulla Roy, the central idea for which had been developed in some of the poems by director Dasgupta, the film tells the story of a girl, Lati, whose mother Rajani is a prostitute who lives and works in a brothel in the suburbs in a town in up-country India. Rajani plans to deliver her daughter to a libidinous older man who would be a rich husband and a protector to her daughter. Lati, however, wants to return to school and finish her studies, and does not wish to pay a price as high for material success: she runs away to Calcutta. The discovery of this new world is described parallel to other stories that tell of emancipation, such as that of three young prostitutes, of an aged couple going nowhere. In a surrealistic approach that is typical of the director, also present in the film are a clumsy cat and an intelligent monkey.