Billed as a tribute to Rituparno Ghosh, Indradeep Dasgupta’s Grihapravesh does not lack ambition and scale. But the effort shows, and the film never comes together as a cohesive whole. Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri reviews.

Indradeep Dasgupta’s Grihapravesh, billed as a tribute to Rituparno Ghosh, is a visually rich yet narratively overwrought Bengali chamber drama that explores domestic disquiet, emotional stagnation, and middle-class melancholy. Despite a compelling setup, strong performances from Subhashree Ganguly, Kaushik Ganguly, and Rudranil Ghosh, and a moody, sepia-toned aesthetic, the film suffers from excessive runtime, thematic repetition, and overwrought emotional cues. Its poetic ambition is undermined by lack of tonal modulation and narrative inertia, resulting in a cinematic experience that is more performative than poignant. With its queer subtext diluted by dramatic exposition, Grihapravesh remains a misfire that mistakes mood for meaning and slowness for depth.

Mahalaya. For every Bengali, a day tinged with anticipation and excitement. Heralding the arrival of Goddess Durga in just a few days. Also, a day marked by a strange solemn awareness that the joy it ushers in also foreshadows its brevity. So it is with the opening sequences of Grihapravesh as we see Titli and her family, consisting of her in-laws and their nephew, preparing for the coming festivities. We get a sense of the family dynamics and also an inkling of the tragedy that haunts the house. Then arrives torrential rain and storm, and with that enters a stranger who will upset the rhythms of the lives of the inmates. He is appropriately named Meghdoot. So much for subtlety.

Also, yes, since the film is positioned as a tribute to Rituparno Ghosh, the protagonist is named after one of his films, Titli – albeit a lesser-known work, which may be an unintentional giveaway that this is ‘Rituparno Ghosh lite’.

Indradeep Dasgupta’s Grihapravesh is positioned as a thoughtful, layered exploration of human relationships, domestic disquiet, and the melancholy of middle-class Bengali life. With a cast anchored by veteran talents and a tone steeped in mood and meaning, the film aspires to be a poetic meditation on loss and existential stagnation. However, despite moments of poignancy and aesthetic grace, Grihapravesh is ultimately undermined by its excessive runtime and an overwrought emotional palette that borders on self-indulgence. In seeking profundity, it frequently lapses into narrative inertia, resulting in a film that feels more laboured than luminous.

The narrative centres on Titli (Subhashree Ganguly), a young woman left emotionally and socially isolated after her husband abandons her just a week into their marriage. With no place to turn, she remains in the home of her elderly in-laws – portrayed by Kaushik Ganguly and Sohini Sengupta. At the insistence of her father-in-law, she converts a part of the house into a homestay, at which arrives Meghdoot (Jeetu Kamal), and the stage is set for an emotional roller-coaster. At its core, Grihapravesh is a chamber drama set within the confines of a sprawling North Kolkata mansion, a domestic space that becomes a crucible for emotional reckonings. The concept has potential. While the idea is thematically rich, its execution falters due to a narrative that feels stretched far beyond its capacity to engage.

 

Pacing and Duration: A Meditative Crawl

The film’s most debilitating flaw is its inordinate length. Clocking in at 156 minutes, Grihapravesh feels padded with languorous scenes that repeat emotional beats without deepening our understanding of the characters or the world they inhabit. And once the film’s core ‘suspense’ – the identity of the stranger – becomes clear halfway through the narrative, much of the film’s second half is a test of the viewer’s patience. The motifs that initially evoke introspection soon lose their potency through repetition.

Dasgupta appears to be striving for a slow cinema aesthetic. However, in the absence of thematic urgency or visual novelty, the stillness turns soporific. The silence isn’t suffused with tension or mystery but often feels empty, as if the film is pausing to gather thoughts that never quite arrive. The film’s slow pacing might have served its meditative intentions had the script offered more compelling layers, but in its current form, it feels like the audience is being asked to wade through emotional treacle. 

Overwrought Sensibilities: Emotion without Economy

Another major shortcoming of Grihapravesh is its overwrought emotional tenor. This is more visible as the film progresses through its laboured second half. Emotions are not allowed to simmer; they are boiled over. Characters seem to speak not to each other but to an imagined audience, declaiming their suffering in ways that can feel forced and performative.

While Bengali cinema has a rich tradition of literary and philosophical introspection, from Satyajit Ray to Rituparno Ghosh, the key to their success lies in subtlety and restraint. Dasgupta, in contrast, appears to mistake aesthetic heaviness for depth. Take the music, for example. Dasgupta, himself a music director of repute, crafts a soundtrack that is rich, textured, but ultimately overpowering. The score is lyrical but too insistent, often stepping in where silence might have served better. In moments of emotional climaxes, the music swells to near operatic levels, detracting from the subtlety of the scene. The score often screams the emotion, almost dictating how the viewer should feel, rather than allowing the emotions to emerge organically from the performances or situations.

Performances: Competent but Constrained

It is difficult to go wrong with the stature of performers like Kaushik Ganguly. Subhashree Ganguly delivers for most of the duration, except towards the end, where one simply does not get the enormity of what she learns (that maniacal laughter towards the end simply does not land). Rudranil Ghosh too puts in a fine act, but as the film’s tone gets more maudlin, his performance falters, particularly where he breaks down in front of his aunt. The performances, while committed, are often straitjacketed by the film’s tonal monotony. The actors bring credibility to their roles, imbuing moments with a quiet dignity. Yet they are seldom allowed to break free from the script’s insistence on solemnity. They are given expositions that mar the purpose of a film.

Kaushik Ganguly, for example, is brilliant in the way he brings up the kite-flying scene – an important narrative point – with Titli, but when during the scene itself, she says something to the effect, ‘I am falling for someone’, it not only feels too much too soon, but also cringe. The same goes for the sequence when Rudranil speaks to the Goddess in an inebriated state. He is very good, but was the exposition needed? In one of the film’s most important sequences towards the end, Titli calls Meghdoot and asks him to ‘say it simply, not complicate things’, but the scene, going on and on, does just that – complicates the narrative. The absence of tonal modulation robs the film of emotional contrast, making the experience more exhausting than enlightening.

Visual Language: Aesthetic Rigidity

Visually, Grihapravesh is consistent, and just about the best thing in the film. The cinematography leans heavily into sepia tones, soft focus, and shadow play, creating a mood of perpetual dusk. While this initially complements the film’s melancholic themes, the uniformity becomes monotonous. The visual palette doesn’t evolve with the narrative, making it difficult for viewers to sense progression, either emotional or temporal.

Moreover, the mise-en-scène is overly composed. The house-as-a-character theme is overdone too – and though critics have pointed to that as one of the film’s strengths, I never got the sense of the house as anything but a mansion that exists for its sake. Interiors are dressed like still-life paintings, with every object seemingly placed for maximum symbolic impact. While visually pleasing, this painterliness contributes to the film’s air of artificiality. One never quite forgets that one is watching a film that is very aware of itself – its beauty, its silence, its weightiness.

This self-consciousness undermines emotional immersion.

Thematic Repetition without Revelation

Ultimately, the film suffers from thematic repetition that does not yield cumulative insight. Grihapravesh circles its motifs of love, loss, aging, and memory with dogged persistence but seldom expands on them. We are told – and shown – again and again that the characters are weighed down by the past, but we are rarely allowed into the specificity of their pain. And when the ‘big’ expose comes, the overwhelming melodrama of the characters’ responses, including Meghdoot insisting ‘we are not criminals’ – (Really? In a film that’s a tribute to Rituparno Ghosh, you have to spell that out?) – robs the viewer of any payoff or catharsis. Queerness here is rendered as a narrative twist, and the whole premise of the relationship between Meghdoot and Titli is undone by the climactic revelation and how that is handled.

This reluctance to confront the characters’ inner worlds in concrete terms means the audience is kept at an emotional distance. We observe their grief, but we don’t feel it. We see their loneliness, but we don’t share in it. The result is a film that feels both heavy and hollow, burdened by emotion, yet lacking emotional impact.

An Ambitious Misfire

Grihapravesh is a film that aspires to poetry but often stumbles into pastiche. Its ambition is undeniable, and its intent is commendable. But cinema is not just about intent; it is also about craft, control, and communication. In stretching its material too thin and layering its emotions too thickly, the film loses the very nuance it seeks to convey.

There is a good 90-minute film buried within Grihapravesh’s 156-minute runtime – a film that could have been poignant, subtle, and resonant. Instead, what we get is a work that mistakes silence for subtlety, slowness for seriousness, and sadness for substance.

As an exploration of domestic melancholy, Grihapravesh remains on the threshold, never quite entering the emotional spaces it wishes to illuminate.