Labour of Love

Aditya Vikram Sengupta's 2015 Bengali film follows a couple in Calcutta during an economic downturn. She works days and he works nights, so the two are almost never home at the same time. There is no dialogue. The narrative consists entirely of daily work: cooking, hanging washing, taking the bus. The sound design carries the city and the repeated movements show how time passes. It is Sengupta's first film. The framing is meticulous, with every shot long and static. At the close the narrative goes somewhere unexpected and casts the order built until then into question. Who it's for: those who like silent and formalist cinema. Who it's not for: viewers expecting dialogue and event; no one speaks across the film.