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I saw 'The Voyeurs' at the Toronto Film Festival, along with Adoor's masterly and stunning 'Four Women' and Rituparno's well-crafted though much lesser (than Adoor) 'The Last Lear'. And oh dear - what is one to say to Buddhadeb da's new enterprise but 'alas!' To wit, the movie is a brilliant idea: we are all voyeurs, says the Director, from the ordinary computer-savvy individual to the media-driven State whose institutional apparatuses of 'watching' entrap us all. The movie's ambitious sweep wants to connect billboards, tabloidism, systems of surveillance - from the rich Marwari who wants to catch his cheating wife to the movie's protagonists who wish to watch the object of their affections surreptitiously, using a spy-cam, to the Big Bad State which keeps us all in surveillance in our terrorism-ridden times, with cameras at railway stations and hospitals and whatnot. So while you can run, you can't hide - as these 'images' - naked or otherwise - jump out of their billboards or TV's or computers or where ever else they might be, and join you in your pesky business of living. Brilliant idea! And the job of a film-maker is to make these connections, and that is where the movie totally loses its cache. The acting is under-par, the pacing difficult, and generally, the film gains nothing from its visual dimension (unlike the visual delight that 'Four Women' is). The movie attempts too much and delivers too little: the lead actors are unimpressive, the surreal elements appear contrived and strained, and the film tries too hard to be a film-festival-film. Not a single frame is memorable, not one bit of dialogue comes away with you, and there is no character with whom you can empathize. This is sad, given how immensely talented Dasgupta is, but the movie is a ragbag of ideas poorly executed, and from Buddhadeb da, this is a terrible let-down.
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