Charulata (1964) (Criterion Collection)

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This film about a woman`s artistic and romantic yearning by Satyajit Ray (The Music Room) is set in late nineteenth-century, pre-independence India. It takes place in the gracious home of a liberal-minded, workaholic newspaper editor and his lonely, stifled wife, Charulata (The Big City`s Madhabi Mukherjee), whose exquisitely composed features mask a burning creativity. When her husband`s poet cousin comes to stay with them, Charulata finds herself both inspired by him to pursue her own writing and dangerously drawn to him physically. Based on a novella by the great Rabindranath Tagore, Charulata is a work of subtle textures, a delicate tale of a marriage in jeopardy and a woman taking the first steps toward establishing her own voice.