The Japanese Wife

Based on Kunal Basu's book, the movie is a story of an unusual relationship between a Bengali man and a Japanese girl, one that redefines long distance relationship. They start as penpals. And it grows to exchanging marriage vows through letters, without even setting eyes on each other.

                                     

Snehamoy (Rahul Bose) is a school teacher in a small village in the Sunderbans, and Miyagi, (Chigusa Takaku) a girl who runs a grocery store in rural Japan. 

He lives with his maushi, the inimitable Moushumi Chatterji, who tries getting him married to her friends daughter, Sandhya (the beautiful Raima Sen), and when he writes to Miyagi about the meeting with Sandhya, she proposes marriage. They build a beautiful relationship, all through a weekly exchange of letters, the blue and red aerograms of yesteryears. They write in great detail, and there's little gifts when they can afford it. Over the thirty five years, all surplus money is spent on postage.

Slowly his room grows to represent her,  Japanese kites and  lots of other very Japanese looking paper work, and she wears bangles and sindoor that he sends her. In fact it's so deep that the entire village is bought into the story and it's accepted as the most natural thing. This sustains despite the beautiful Sandhya coming back to live in their house, as a widow with a young child.

It's like a minimalist everything, like the haiku Miyagi refers to in the beginning of the movie. So much said and felt in so little space. And again, also as turbulent as the sunderbans. filled with unfulfilled passion, and longing represented by his doing himself on a rocking boat. But through it all there's just more depth and poignancy, than sadness. 

The performances are brilliant, Rahul Bose with his village boy look, Raima sen as the adoring and shy widow, moushumi, even as maushi, is still as vivacious. Aparna Sen..well, guess the movie talks.

Anay Goswami's cinematography was visual poetry of the almost alien and devastating landscape of the Sunderbans.

I watched the movie in Bengali, as I couldn't find one with subtitles, and yet it kept me glued. Says a lot for the movie.