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Neem Annapurna
aka Bitter Morsel 1979 95’ b&w Bengali d/p/sc Buddhadev Dasgupta st Kamal Kumar Majumdar c Kamal Nayak lp Monidipa Ray, Sunil Mukherjee, Jayita Sarkar, Manojit Lahiri
A married man loses his job in a small town so he takes his family to the city in search of work. To make ends meet, they rent out part of their hovel to an old beggar. When the father fails to find work and his eldest daughter is tempted by prostitution, the mother steals a sack of rice from the beggar who has a heart attack and dies. She disposes of the body and serves up a delicious meal. Guilt prevents her from eating and she goes out to vomit as the film ends. Dasgupta’s 2nd feature evokes a 1950s Ray style in using slow action, making the plot secondary to extensive and extended mid-shots and realist detailing. The director claimed the influence of Godard in some sequences.