Cast: Triptii Dimri, Swastika Mukherjee, Babil Khan, Amit Sial and Varun Grover

Director: Anvita Dutt

Set in the 1930s, when Calcutta was the hub of Hindi film music, Qala tells the story of a female playback singer caught in a web of defeats and deceits, part of which are of her own making. Her life revolves around music and her mother.

Qala is a worthy follow-up to the writer-director’s debut film, Bulbbul. It sees Dutt reunite not only with Netflix, but also with producer Karnesh Sharma of Clean Slate Filmz, music director Amit Trivedi, cinematographer Siddharth Diwan and actor Triptii Dimri. 

Qala  is not able to enjoy her fame as she is constantly haunted by her past. As the film progresses, we learn more about her strained relationship with her mother (played by Swastika Mukherjee).

Tripti Dimri is the heart and soul of Qala. The film gives her ample scope to showcase her abilities and the actress rises to the occasion. She manages to capture her character’s vulnerabilities reasonably well.

The progress that the protagonist makes against all odds is slow and agonising, with her mother, who believes she has the girl’s best interest at heart, but is the epitome of toxic parenting in the process.

Qala’s tale depicts the struggles of a young girl in pre-Independence India fighting for a niche in the fields of classical music and playback singing.

When a Solan boy Jagan Batwal (debutant Babil Khan), who literally comes in from the cold, infiltrates Qala’s world with the tacit encouragement of her mother Urmila (Swastika Mukherjee), the fragile girl faces a deep abyss and encounters noises in her head and fear in her heart. She is in danger of being deprived of the role she has always aspired to play as the undisputed bearer of a generations-old musical legacy but also her mother’s attention and care.

Babil makes his presence felt despite being burdened with a one-dimensional character. The two women characters dig deep into the souls of women who are as ambitious as they are susceptible to bouts of weakness and come up with compelling performances.

Flitting between a feudal mansion in Himachal Pradesh and Calcutta, Qala is a fictional tale, but it gives its supporting characters names that bring to mind Hindi film music greats of yore. The leading singer of the era is Chandan Lal Sanyal (Sameer Kochhar), a music composer is Sumant Kumar (Amit Sial) and a lyricist is Majrooh (Varun Grover). To top it all, Anushka Sharma appears in a black and white song sequence in which she evokes Madhubala.

We have to applaud the hues and shades used in the schema of this production. The constant interplay of light and shade, of warm interiors and cold exteriors, of subdued hues and extravagant glows lends the film visual variety and depth and accentuates the psychological dimensions that are at play.

However, the darkness is deliberate and so is the pain of the process. An out and out a Director’s film, the movie is meticulously made with the female lens.

An interesting one time watch.

Streams on netflix.