Blood Diamond

Tooth Pari: When Love Bites | Cast: Tanya Maniktala, Shantanu Maheshwari, Sikandar Kher, Saswata Chatterjee, Tilottama Shome | Director: Pratim Dasgupta | Hindi | Netflix

India doesn’t have a vampire myth. What it has is a goddess who drinks blood. Pratim Dasgupta has created a fantastical world of ‘upar’ (upstairs) and ‘neeche’ (downstairs) populated by those who drink blood and those who don’t. It is a world rich with ancient, languid creatures who have lived underground for centuries, shying away from the light. There is David, an image-maker down the ages for men such as Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi. There is Meera, a courtesan from the era of Bengal’s last independent nawab, Siraj-ud-Daula, who teaches women the art of seduction. There is an intermediary corporate titan modelled on a certain goateed, dhoti-clad media magnate who has an interest in tapping into blood samples. And there is the world of ‘upar’, of a dentist who wants to be a chef, his mother who loves to feed people, and his father who is a well-known dentist with a secret recipe for a mouth freshener. Binding these together is Rumi, a beautiful vampire who could be a goddess reborn played by Tanya Maniktala and a down-at-heel policeman (named Kartik Pal, as an ode to KC Paul, a Kolkata resident who believes that the sun revolves around the earth). Played by Sikandar Kher, he may or may not be connected to a band of vampire slayers. The two worlds are shot in different colour palettes and meander through Kolkata at its most beautiful at night. The central track is a one-line conceit: what happens when a vampire breaks her molar and has to visit a dentist? But with its cheeky sense of humour and its many Easter eggs, it is a universe that is so dense and immersive that it is difficult to depart it.

Why Watch it? For its intricate details. ‘Neeche’ is directly under the Maidan Metro station in Kolkata and shudders every time a train passes, the mother thinks her daughter-in-law is awfully familiar from TV shows (a comment on our mythology-obsessed soaps and Satyajit Ray’s Devi), and a family feeds its in-laws-to-be as if food is going out of fashion

Back to College

Garmi | Cast: Vyom Yadav, Puneet Singh, Jatin Goswami | Director: Tigmanshu Dhulia| Hindi | SonyLIV

Arvind Shukla, a young Brahmin boy leaves Lalganj for Trivenipur at the insistence of his lecturer father who wants him to clear the UPSC exam. Said boy is sharp of mind and generous of heart. The only problem is his anger, which tends to erupt a little too easily. Few directors understand psychological and physical violence as well as Tigmanshu Dhulia does. Twenty years ago, he made the definitive campus angst film, Haasil, which launched Irrfan Khan’s career in cinema. There it was Aniruddh Sharma (played by Jimmy Shergill) who falls in love with a Thakur girl and ends up on the run for murder. Much like Vyom Yadav’s Arvind, he is an amateur actor, who excels at Hamlet in particular. Dhulia returns to the familiar stomping ground of university politics, the laboratory of future politicians, with Haasil’s themes. It is also a toxic melting pot of self-styled godmen, local goons, ambitious businessmen looking for future payoffs on present investments and corrupt police officers looking to expand caste networks. Caste, class, language, gender discrimination — every possible indignity is heaped on Arvind but he manages to struggle and survive. Dhulia is a master of expressing violence, and doesn’t hesitate in showing the unshowable. The young people are less idealistic than in Haasil, the politics more feral and the goal is to make more money. Genuine dissent remains the loser.

Why watch it? For an extraordinary cast of mostly new actors who are startling in their authenticity and intensity

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