Bengali film braced for backlash against last sexual taboo

A daring new film by a leading director on lesbian relationships among prostitutes, portrayed by sex workers from Calcutta's red-light areas, is being released in India this week amid fears of a conservative backlash.

The Bengali feature film, Mando Meyer Upakhyan, by nationally acclaimed director Buddhadev Dasgupta, features 20 sex workers, along with one of India's top actresses, Rituparna Sengupta, and theatre personality, Ram Gopal Bajaj, in the lead roles.

The film has won critical acclaim abroad, including at the recent Toronto Film Festival where it was screened, but Dasgupta fears a repetition of the violent protests four years ago by Hindu hardliners against Deepa Mehta's film Fire, which also dealt with the forbidden subject of female homosexuality.

'Mr Dasgupta's film is very provocative because it challenges social taboos. You can see lesbianism in all its manifestations in the new film,' said film critic Anil Grover.

'It is bound to be doubly controversial because there is a lot of stigma attached to prostitution and there are so many commercial sex workers in the cast that a negative reaction is highly probable.'

The film revolves around the teenage daughter of a middle-aged prostitute who refuses to become the mistress of an elderly businessman. The young girl fights tooth and nail not to fall into the trap of sexual slavery and ultimately wins.

Dasgupta auditioned dozens of prostitutes and held an intensive week-long workshop for the 20 he picked for various roles in the five-million-rupee (HK$807,000) film produced by a Bengali expatriate.