Antonogor: Where love is poison

Dhaka -- the city of bricks and concrete. In such a mechanical city, amid all commercial businesses, somewhere there, the red rose blooms, blooms to represent the love that is still alive in its narrow lanes. The love for which one can risk all his/her belonging, including one's life.

Antonogor is the story of this melancholic city. Antonogor tells the tale of such loves which have nipped in the buds.

The story has three major threads, each holding a couple in its ends.

Firstly, there comes Shuvo and Purnima. The couple recently got romantically involved with each other, but the typical obstacle shown in Bangla cinema in such cases is the difference in class. So, Shuvo and Purnima flee from their town to Dhaka city, and as days go by, something unexpected happens to Purnima. She gets into the wrong hands.

Then, there comes the second couple, Moushumi and Maruf. In the first part of the movie, Moushumi's uterus is diagnosed with cancerous signs. But before operating it down, Moushumi just wants to have a baby, which his husband, Maruf, is unable to manage because of some psychological problems.

Determined to have a baby, Moushumi thinks of Intrauterine insemination as a way, and for that, she talks with Dany, a boy from her locality, to help her, necessarily without her husband's consent.

Next is the couple, Rojina and Iliyas. Rojina is a married woman whose husband just got out of jail. As a husband, he is very abusive, and as a human, he is a couple of times worse than that. However, Iliyas, Rojina's neighbour, falls in love with her, so he thinks to escape the city with her. And to manage money for that, he steals Tk 50 lakh from Sawdagar Bhai, the local drug dealer.

Apparently, the thread seems to be detached, but they are not. Rojina and Moushumi work in the same parlour and are sympathetic to each other. From whom Moushumi tries to get help, Danny, is Sawdagar Bhai's right-hand man. Rojina's abusive husband is the one who fetches Purnima on the path of prostitution.

Besides being connected, all three threads have something in common among them. It is that, of each of the couples, one dies at the end.

Shuvo dies in the hands of those who came in search of Purnima. Moushumi unintendedly dies at the hands of Maruf, her husband. Sawdagar Bhai kills Iliyas as punishment for stealing his money.

Dhaka -- the city of bricks and concrete. In such a mechanical city, amid all commercial businesses, somewhere there, the red rose blooms.

But this melancholic city's poison makes the flower poisonous enough to kill a lover. Love is like a cup of Hemlock here. Once one is into it, there is no getting back. Still, people love, people die, and people live with pain and tears.

Prantar Dastidar and Nidra Neha were exceptional in their roles of Shuvo and Purnima. Maruf, or Shohel Mondal, was good as always, but Shabnam Faria as Moushumi delivered a tremendous performance.

Runa Khan, as Rojina, is such a beauty, and the OTT prince, Shyamol Mawla, has successfully accompanied her as Iliyas. Ashish Khandaker as Sawdagor Bhai was mindblowing. Rojina's husband as well as Danny both were also played very well.

This fiction, directed by Gautam Kairi, will surely make the audiences see the dark side of Dhaka. Especially the cinematography and colour-grading are the strongest points of the cinema.

This enjoyable fiction of one and a half hours is now streaming on Chorki.

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