The Voyeurs

Rats teeming along a hospital floor; a city bus turned nocturnal playground; furniture carried through crowded streets: Indian director Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s newest surrealistic-tinged fantasy presents a world that’s indeed gone topsy-turvy, where lovers and dreamers are mistaken for terrorists and where the desire for images masks an inability to actually understand them. In crowded Kolkatta (Calcutta), the lonely tech-geek Dilip (Prosenjit Chatterjee) works installing surveillance cameras. The only “human” touch in his bedroom, a jumble of old spy-ware and webcams, is a picture of ‘50s Bollywood star Madhubala, his only “love.” When his friend Yasin arrives from the countryside, however, things start picking up, especially after an aspiring actress Rekha (Bollywood starlet Sameera Reddy) moves in next door. Dilip’s innocent crush on her, combined with an extra spy camera and some poor judgment, soon leads to a decision so bad it can only get worse, one made suddenly more deadly when the authorities discover it.

“Our world is obsessed with security and ordinary human values like love and kindness have been mechanized,” Dasgupta writes. “The masters of advanced technology reinterpret them as ‘dangerous.’” With The Voyeurs, Dasgupta (The Wrestlers, SFIAAFF ‘01; Memories in the Mist, SFIAAFF ’06) charts what happens when innocents venture into such a world, but still makes room for his typically warm-hearted, surrealist visions. The Voyeurs also serves up a sly tribute to the more innocent commercial cinema of the past, referencing not only Madhubala but ‘70s star Rekha, all reminders of a time when love, comedies and errors ended far more innocently.