Chitrangada (2012)

Chitrangada: Directed by Rituparno Ghosh. With Rituparno Ghosh, Jisshu Sengupta, Kaushik Banerjee, Dipankar Dey. Chitraganda: The Crowning Wish, is a lusciously lit and deeply personal drama about a choreographer considering a gender-reassignment surgery. The film also explores insights into how gender expression can affect families.

“If you appreciate beautiful cinematography and donu0026#39;t care all that much about the screenplay or dialogue, you might like this movie. Itu0026#39;s one of the last movies of director Rituporno Ghosh and heu0026#39;s also plays the main protagonist, Rudra, present in nearly every frame. One of the obvious problems with the film is that itu0026#39;s hard to relate to Rudra, who is an unpleasant tragedy queen, though we are told people think of him as vivacious. As a transgender person he imperiously rides roughshod over the other characters in the film, in a truly cringe-worthy way. He is, by turns, bitter, angry and whiny and quite a pain to watch for 140 minutes.nOne assumes Rituporno wanted viewers to empathize with the transgender cause, but it works in reverse. The dialogue is half in Bengali and half in English, which is rather jarring. On the good side, the film is visually very appealing, especially the scenes shot on the beach and the dance-drama being rehearsed on stage.”