Review 1: DU JONE – ADVENTUROUS LOVE STORY

by: Shoma A. Chatterji

Plagiarisation has its advantages. Specially if a regional film is copied from a slightly old film that either did not do well at the box office, or has relatively new faces in the main cast or both. Sometimes, the plagiarized regional version fares much better at the box office than the original. Dujone marks the debut of director Rajeev Kumar, who happens to be the husband of the film’s leading lady. The film stars Dev and Srabanti, two of the most promising young stars in contemporary Bengali cinema. The film, a pre-Durga Pooja release, is a box office hit in Kolkata and elsewhere. It is a classic example of this kind of plagiarisation. The original source of ‘inspiration’ is Karan’s Yeh Dil (2003) directed and scripted by Teja. Yeh Dil again, is a remake of a Telugu blockbuster Nuvvu Nenu. There is a catch though. The producer-director of Dujone should not be hauled to court for plagiarisation the way Shree Venkatesh Films were for brazenly copying every scene and frame from Namastey London, having to shell out an out-of-court hefty sum to the producer of Namastey London.

Dujone is a love story that is treated like an endless, roller-coaster adventure film that may raise the hackles of a die-hard critic for throwing every bit of logic overboard, but is cheered, whistled at and applauded by the middle-class and low middle-class Bengali for offering relief from the drudgery of their everyday lives made worse with the rising price of food and other perishables. For a mass audience forced to make do with rice and boiled potatoes for lunch, Dujone is like fish curry cooked with mustard paste and steaming hot rice.

Akash (Dev) and Meghna (Srabanti) study in the same class and in the same college. Akash, who is the scion of a millionaire industrialist, is good at games while Meghna, who belongs to a crude, unpolished fisherman’s family, is brilliant in academics. The two do not seem to be aware of one another’s presence but slowly become close friends and then fall in love. The millionaire (Arun Banerjee) does not care for the liaison and neither does Meghna’s crude father (Debesh Roy Choudhury) or his harridan, widowed sister (Seema Biswas). But the lovers stick out a thumb at all objections and go painting the town pink, thanks to a bunch of supportive college friends. The girl’s father puts his army of goons to chase the boy while the boy’s father hires the services of a professional killer (Arijit Dutta) to bump off the girl. After endless series of a variety of chases manifested in many different ways, the lovers are married off in public under the nose of their opposing parents, with the help of an entire army of collegians, just as they were in Yeh Dil. There are traces of Bobby made several years ago.

Though most of the incidents in the film make one feel that logic has died a silent death, the film manages to keep the audience hooked from beginning to end. Dev and Srabonti steal every scene from everyone else with their freshness, their energy, their youth and their vigour, forcing one to forget about the absurdity of Akash escaping from a direct hit with an axe-like object in the back unscathed save for a bottle of tomato ketchup lavishly splattered across his white over-shirt. He is still to mature as an actor but the promise is right there. Srabonti sticks out like a sore thumb within the ambience of her crude home environment. But she is a good actress and beautiful too who delivers her lines with restraint, without melodrama and is completely in control. She shines in the scene where she gets on to Akaash’s two-wheeler, hugs him from behind and gestures her indifference to her disapproving father and aunt. Dev’s father’s scheming girlfriend is expendable and so is her daughter.
The supporting cast pales in comparison mainly because of their tendency to overact, render dialogues very loudly and their characterization within the script. Even the silent mercenary killer (Arijit Dutta) who has no dialogue does a terrible job and looks thoroughly unconvincing. The most disappointing performance comes from Seema Biswas in her debut in a Bengali film. As the terrible aunt, she is loud, bitchy and murderous to an extreme though the audience thinks differently. It claps and cheers whenever she vents out her vitriol on her niece. The director should have insisted getting her hair dye because the jet black dye looks absolutely put-on. Rajeev Kumar could have tightened his script to make for a better final product. The production values are very good and so is the costume design of the lead players.

The adventure moves from small town to village to forests to a train to the railway tracks with Akash and Megha being chased right through the second half of the film offering very good visuals and lending depth to the cinematographic space of the film. Jeet Ganguly’s music is good but too many songs, some at the wrong time and place, tend to take away from the film’s intense mood. This film has several reasons for becoming a hit.