Hey, we scored a free fan! NBC 11 was giving out free handheld fans to SFIAAFF-goers attending last night's screening of Bengali movie . We're not really sure what the fan had to do with anything (a significant part of the movie is set by the ocean or a river, and several scenes center around sudden breezes, so it's not like we got a sense of profound heat or anything from the film), but we're always happy to get free things.

Memories in the Mist is directed by Bengali director Buddhadeb Dasgupta, considered one of the region's finest directors, and the movie was described as "Bunuelian" in the program. We're not entirely sure what that meant, exactly (no eyes get sliced open in this movie), but Memories in the Mist is kind of a dryly-witty, magical-realist tale about one Calcutta man's life of quiet desperation. Is that Bunuelian?

Main character Sumantha, a socially-awkward man devoted to his two children and cute-as-a-button black lab Jill, isn't getting along with his America-obsessed wife (played by Sameera Reddy, "Bollywood's Jennifer Lopez"), who makes no pretense about hating his guts. As his wife grows more and more distant and his situation at work gets worse and worse, Sumantha struggles for some type of rapproachment with his estranged father and tries heroically to make some kind of connection to anyone he can find -- a newscaster, a pickpocket, a man carrying around a huge bloody dagger.

The movie was like a particular type of good novel -- it was the kind of engrossing where you kind of wanted to debate the characters afterwards ("Sumantha, why don't you talk to the guys in your office about the boss?"), and then you kind of wanted to debate the director ("why does Bollywood's Jennifer Lopez have to be so one-dimensionally shrewish?"). The acting was great and the movie was beautifully shot. Plus, Southern India looks gorgeous -- we totally want to go now.

Picture from Memories in the Mist.

Memories in the Mist