With Iti Mrinalini the powerful actress and director Aparna Sen is back to Bengali films nearly after a decade. It is also her first mainstream venture, but the film frustrates the audience as it leads them nowhere.

ITI MRINALINI (An unfinished Letter) has been released simultaneously in Hindi and Bengali. It is debatable if the film is Aparna Sen’s best work compared with her two earlier films Mr. and Mrs. Iyer and 36 Chowringhee Lane. Nearly after one decade Aparna Sen has come back with a Bengali film; her last film was Paromitar Ekdin. In Iti Mrinalini, Aparna Sen plays the older Mrinalini while her daughter Konkona Sen Sharma portrays the younger version.

The film is based on the autobiography of aging actress Mrinalini Mitra, but is more or less similar to story of Aparna’s own life as well. The role played by Konkana Sen Sharma, as the young Mitra, is more challenging than Aparna’s, who plays the older Mitra. The facial resemblance between the mother and daughter is so effectively used in the film that everything is marked by natural ease. The story for the film was penned by Ranjan Ghosh and the film was produced by Shrikant Mehta and Mahendra Soni of Shree Venkatesh Films Pvt. Ltd.

The film explores the issue of extra-marital affair of film director Siddhartha Sarkar, who is a typical middle class hypocrite with all commitment to his wife and sons. Konkana Sen has been projected more as the mother of Shona than as an actress; she dissociates herself from films for long 15 years till Imtiaz comes with the offer for the role of Kunti. This is the weakest part in the film where Aparna Sen as the aged Mrinalini, realizes her failure in love.

Her director-cum-lover Imtiaz (played by Priyanshu Chatterjee) has moved on with his life and is now going around with his new actress. This part has been poorly played by Aparna and is comparable to Chintan’s acting in the film. Chintan neither looks like an intellectual from Kerala nor Bengal, except for the moment where he shows his expertise while sympathetically embracing Konkona at her distressing moments.

The film ends on a positive note with Mrinalini finally being able to come out of her trauma when she receives a message from Chintan. She leaves her sleeping pills and goes out for a morning walk with her dog. The gunshots used twice, once at the beginning of the film for killing Abhi, her Naxalite boyfriend of college, and second for killing herself are also out of place.

There’s another death in the film, the death of love child Shona caused by plane crash is quite tragic and is reported only over the phone. The inclusion of socio-political events in the narrative - from operation Blue Star to the Mumbai blasts is as bizarre as the kissing scenes; the film could have done better without these. Mrinalini’s character is more pathetic than tragic for the exhibition of her victimization.

Her emotional turmoil leads to her self destruction and her choice of the path of suicide is morally unsupportable.

The film reaches nowhere and leads the audience to a state of confusion. The film cannot be taken as a woman’s journey nor as a tragic picture of a distressed woman. Too many things are interspersed and the philosophical focus is also missing. The sleeping pills are not flung outside but kept in a bottle probably for future use. The audiences feel relieved when the suicide note is torn and the sound of Azaan is heard from a distance.

Rajat Kapoor as Siddartha Sarkar,Priyanshu Chatterjee as Imtiaz ,German actor Suzanne Bernert as Julia Campbell are excellent in supporting roles. But expectations of the audiences are belied by Konkona Sen Sharma and Aparna herself because of overacting and overconfidence. We miss both Konkona and Aparna of the earlier films. The songs, especially the Tagore songs ( with special stress on ‘t’ in the pronunciation of mukti ) are unique and beautifully attuned to the varied themes of the film.