While flipping over the pages of internet I came across a few beautiful pictures, saying something silently but the words can be heard from long distance. I am talking about Aparna Sen’s ‘The Japanese Wife’ based on the Kunal Basu book of the same name.

635 Letters

3 Phone Calls

15 Years of Marriage but they have not met!

This can send many to coma in today’s world but Aparna Sen’s ‘The Japanese Wife’ takes you to the last century, when the idea of computer hasn’t been conceived, when phones were commonly uncommon and when letters were the only medium to pen down your words for a long distance friend. In such times an arithmetic teacher falls in love with a pen-friend through letters, without meeting with a Japanese girl.

Both were alien to each other’s languages and communication was possible only through a foreign language – English – with the help of dictionary, which often caused hilarious results.

The story involves three shy people improbably fall in love – The protagonist Snehamoy Chatterjee (Rahul Bose) who is an Arithmetic teacher in the interiors of West Bengal falls in love and marry with Miyage (Chigasu Takaku) the Japanese girl, a pen friend over letters and remain loyal to her all through her life but has never actually met her for fifteen long years.

But the twist in the tale comes when Sandhya (Raima Sen) a young widow comes to stay with Snehamoy with her eight year old son. The arithmetic teacher bond with the boy and soon he realizes the palpable bond and fatherhood. This evidently develops an understanding with Sandhya too.

In the age of internet where social networking has changed the very meaning of friends and love; where every next day people find themselves falling in love and next day falling out of it. Can this film ‘The Japanese Wife’ deliver a vigorous statement on bonding and relationships?

It was first slated to release in October 2008 but delayed until 4 April 2010. It is actually filmed in three languages, English, Bengali and Japanese.