Indian director Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s Labour of Love wins hearts at ADFF

Set against the backdrop of the global recession, the film is a tale of the love between a married couple who, thanks their economic circumstances, never actually meet in the film.

Basabdutta Chatterjee in Labour of Love. Courtesy ADFF

Aditya Vikram Sengupta's Labour of Love is slow. Really slow. And with barely a word of dialogue. An intentionally languid critique of a global economic system that, despite the fact that rolling news would have us thinking the recession has mostly affected bankers and nice middle-class families who are struggling to pay their mortgages, has savaged the lives of ordinary working people all over the world.

Set against the backdrop of the global recession, Sengupta’s film is a tale of the love between a married couple who, thanks to their economic circumstances, never actually meet in the film.

The wife (Basabdutta Chatterjee) works all day in a Calcutta handbag factory, while the husband (Ritwick Chakraborty) pulls the night shift at a local printing press. We watch the pair go about their isolated daily lives, never really as a couple, yet somehow the bond between them remains clear throughout the movie.

This isn’t Bollywood fare, and the director Sengupta is fully aware that what he has created is not the most acceptable cinema.

“I initially thought the film wouldn’t be well-received because it has a certain pace, it’s a slow film, and it kind of tests the audience, but the response so far has been amazing and I’m really happy about that.”

Sengupta’s film could reasonably be labelled art house, though the director is not entirely comfortable with this tag.

“I don’t really like the categorisation of art and commercial films,” he explains. “I find most commercial films really arty because I don’t understand anything that happens. It’s all entirely all subjective.

“But it’s true that I can’t really imagine this film being widely distributed. It would be very difficult for this film to get ‘out there’. I think it’ll do well in Calcutta, where there’s an audience that watches a lot of art cinema, but mostly audiences are very used to fast food. The entire system and cinema trend is very fast-foodish, there’s just so many films.”

The film is closely based on Sengupta’s own experience, the director says. “In 2009 the recession hit globally and India was very badly affected. Lots of my friends lost their jobs, and it was the working class that was most affected. A hundred people were just losing jobs overnight and I didn’t know what I’d have done if I’d lost my job overnight with a family to feed.

“The characters in the film are under that constant pressure of losing their jobs for no reason. Calcutta is a very political place, there are always protests and demonstrations going on, and that’s the outside world of the film. Inside, though, the world of the characters is all about love. It’s really very peaceful and that’s what helps them deal with the world outside.”

Although this particular film is probably unlikely to be seen outside the festival circuit, Sengupta is hoping it can serve to place him in the shop window, and advertise his ability to work on larger-scale projects.

Labour of Love was, in fact, self-financed while the director was relentlessly, and so far unsuccessfully, trying to attract funding for a different project. Having received positive receptions at the Venice Film Festival, and now Abu Dhabi too, Sengupta hopes some doors may open soon.

“The success has been overwhelming,” he says. “I get really embarrassed when people say good things about the film. I hope this helps me get support in future from bigger bodies as I want to make bigger films that I won’t be able to manage myself. I have a couple of projects I’ve been working on, but I need a proper structured finance set-up, so I hope this film acts as a calling card.”

Labour of Love, today, 4.15pm, Vox 5