Film critic Saibal Chatterjee reviews Pritha Chakraborty's Phera, a deeply moving father-son drama that explores home, memory, migration, and emotional estrangement with remarkable sensitivity, elevated by outstanding performances from Ritwick Chakraborty and Sanjay Mishra.

A sensitive, subtle father-son relationship drama, Pritha Chakraborty's Phera (Return) is delivered with heartwarming tenderness and striking sure-handedness.

The film strikes an instant emotional chord without having to resort to trite tropes and superfluous exposition. Employing unobtrusive narrative methods, it tells a tale of two men dealing with the inexorable pull of home and unaddressed psychological schisms.

Phera, released nationwide this week, is Chakraborty's second film. It abounds in delicate touches that reflect a distinct directorial sensibility, ample glimpses of which audiences got in the SRFTI alum's debut film, Mukherjee Dar Bou (Mr. Mukherjee's Wife, 2019).

The film draws a lot of its efficacy from the central performances by two consummate screen performers, Ritwick Chakraborty and Sanjay Mishra (in his first Bengali film), who strike up a phenomenally sublime duet that elevates Phera significantly.

Home, Memory and Emotional Displacement

Is a home that one has grown up in a burden that shackles and restricts, or is it an essential element of existence that provides sustenance and fosters renewal? Phera probes that question in a gentle and unhurried manner, making its point about both moving away and finding one's way back with exceptional clarity.

Instead of rendering everything in the form of words and overt gestures, Chakraborty's screenplay takes recourse to a combination of barely articulated feelings and allusions to unuttered, inchoate misgivings, leaving a great deal for the audience to figure out.

Indeed, Phera does not force-feed. It flows gently along an undulating arc as it dwells upon a difficult, fraying father-son bond that is tested by the distance that has opened between the two men who once shared a home and are back together again.

Pannalal Chatterjee (Mishra), an ex-footballer and still-enthusiastic coach, is a 75-year-old widower. He lives alone but contentedly in his crumbling ancestral home in semi-urban Kalindipur.

His drinking mate Bonku (a terrific Pradip Bhattacharya) and a stray dog that he feeds and takes care of are Pannalal's constant companions. He has no reason to complain. But his house, which has made him what he is, is in a state of disrepair.

Pannalal is compelled to relocate to his son Palash's (Ritwick Chakraborty) rented apartment in Kolkata. Both men are displaced, one of them temporarily, or so he hopes. The father's urges are at odds with those of his son, triggering moments of suppressed unease.

Pannalal is ill at ease in the city. For him, home is where the heart is. For the son, home is a movable entity dependent on necessity and aspiration.

Palash works for an OOH advertising agency. He is under pressure to find the funds for the renovation of his father's house. Will he ever return to the place where the latter was raised and where his mother breathed her last?

Palash seeks permanence in Kolkata. He left his village as a 20-year-old. Two decades on, he is firming up plans to acquire a condo. While the old man is determined not to let go of his roots, the son is close to cementing roots in the city.

Palash has grouses against his father. "I don't have any childhood memories of my father," he laments to a friend. Football, he says, allowed Pannalal little time to devote to his family. All these years later, Palash feels deprived.

The two men barely understand each other. When a doctor asks Palash whether his father has high blood sugar or cholesterol, he has no answer. Likewise, when on his son's birthday, Pannalal is asked if Palash likes spicy food, he isn't sure. "Make it medium," he says.

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Migration, Changing Identities and Human Connections

The relatable, everyday conflict between the two is a microcosmic portrait that migrants uprooted from their towns and villages inevitably face as the definition of home changes in a rapidly expanding world where all jobs and opportunities for growth are elsewhere.

Not so for Snigdha (Sohini Sarkar), who has inherited the suburban flat that Palash resides in. Going through a messy divorce, the young woman clings to her past, a past represented by a room that has remained untouched since the demise of her father.

Palash's old man, standing in for the father who is no more, develops a bond with Snigdha. Phera explores life-affirming connections that people make and acts that they perform because the kindness of strangers never goes out of vogue, no matter how much the world changes.

During a meal at a restaurant, Pannalal quietly orders an extra portion of biryani for visibly hungry boys loitering outside the eatery. A bike-taxi driver, a migrant from Mirik who aspires to open a momo joint in Kolkata one day, offers Palash a packed meal for free after the ride ends.

Palash's do-gooder colleague, Ananda (Subrat Dutta), uses all his free time to run errands for elderly or ailing neighbours whose children have migrated out of the city in search of greener pastures. He rues the dwindling of his group of friends in the locality.

The film's humanist vision carves out little spaces for selfless acts of generosity even in a sprawling metropolis that is prone to reducing people to mere faceless specks.

Performances That Elevate the Film

Sanjay Mishra, dubbing his own lines, immerses himself completely in the role of the conflicted father. Ritwick Chakraborty, as always, is a treat to watch—he internalises a scintillating blend of contradictory emotions expressed with striking ease.

The two sterling performances are perfectly in sync with the economy of means that the director demonstrates in a film that is unique in the context of contemporary Bengali commercial cinema.

Phera is a simple and meaningful piece of cinema that says everything it has to but does not drown in verbosity.