Need to fail? Make a film.
Flop-E (Bengali, dir. Pritam Sarkar, 2012)
Starring: Sabyasachi Chakraborty, Paoli Dam, Monika Chakraborty, Barun Chanda, Suvrojit, Saswati Guhathakurta, Spirit Mukherjee, Sanjib Mukherjee, Joy Ganguly
Worth Revisiting? I'd have to give that a qualified "maybe". Flop-E can't even be described as "one hot mess", because, in all honesty, the whole thing is kind of luke-warm. Which is, frankly, too bad -- there's the germ of a really interesting story here. Successful businessman Mr. Pranabesh Mitra (Barun Chanda) has never failed, and decides that perhaps he should have a taste of failure to know what it's like. He asks his managers to come up with a good money-losing proposition, and one of them, Mrittika (Paoli Dam) comes up with the idea to make a flop film.
The problem with the film is that it never seems to know where to put its focus -- there's the story of making the flop film, there's the story of the four friends who want to make films, there's a potential love story -- but there's no pacing or rhythm at all. Also, we never really come to care about any of the characters -- we have no idea what really motivates them, really, apart from Mr. Mitra.
And although veteran actor Sabhyasachi Chakraborty is placed front and centre of all the film's promotions, his role in the film is miniscule, and comes very, very late in the film. That's a small quibble.
All that said: there are some truly funny and wry moments -- mostly as Mrittika and Mitra interview prospective directors to try to figure out a flop film formula -- so I think the film is worth more than six words, and I'll come back to it at some point.
(BTW, I was lucky to see the film because it's currently running (with English subtitles) on my Mela I-Pad app. It may not be the greatest film I've seen lately, but I was really pleased to be able to see it.)
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