Review : Paanch Adhyay

"'Paanch Adhyay' is like five states of relationship" said director Pratim D Gupta.

"'Paanch Adhyay' is like five states of slow torture" said yours truly after being subjected to 120 minutes of Priyanshu Chaterjee's absence of decent acting skills (read:overacting),Dia Mirza's two facial expression (happy and sad) and Sampurna's atrocious delivery of dialogues in a very whiny voice.

The story is simple.The movie is split into 5 phases,hence the name. Arindam Roy Choudhury (Priyanshu Chaterjee) falls for Ishita (dia mirza) and chases her. Then they get married. In due course Ishita gets pregnant but she looses the child. Arindam and Ishita grow distant. During that time he scouted a new face to be the heroine in his movie, Ranjabati Sen (Sampurna). One stormy night Arindam takes the responsibility to drive Ranjabati home,but since she is new in town she doesnt remember exactly where her house is. So they decided to make the best out of a rainy night in the car. Next morning it is revealed that Ranjabati did know the way to her house but she had fallen in love with Arindam and wanted him so she tricked him into sleeping with her. Arindam is furious when he comes to know that,and he feels guilty for cheating on Ishita. After sometime he decides to come clean to Ishita about his secret affair. Turns out Ishita,too,had some secret which she wanted to come clean with. Ishita goes first and tell him that she has cancer and she will die in a few months. Arindam then decides not to tell her about his affair. They go back to being happy husband-wife. Ishita dies. Arindam gravitates towards calling ranjabati "tui" from "tumi". Ranjabati is still hung up on Arindam.

Many movies are slow,specially movies on love and relationships.those movies make up for the slow pace through class acting,sparp dialogues,crisp direction,smart editing etc. Paanch Adhyay has none of these.