Ardhangini (2023)

After Suman suffers an accident, the two women in his life – Meghna, the wife, and Shubhra, the ex-wife – are compelled to meet each other. Ardhangini revolves around the awkward emotional duel between the two wives – past and present – in a time of personal crisis.

Kaushik Ganguly’s Ardhangini explores the complexities of relationships, challenging societal norms, and the eternal search for identity and fulfillment. Suman Chatterjee (Koushik Sen) is incapable of becoming a father, but his ego prevents him from accepting the truth. He pins the blame on his wife Subhra (Churni Ganguly), which leads to frequent altercations. Unable to bear it after a point, Subhra decides to separate from her husband.A few years later, Suman meets Meghna Mustafi (Jaya Ahsan), a Bangladeshi singer, and they decide to marry. But Suman’s conservative family is against the match because of Meghna’s religion, forcing Suman to move out of the family home and get a rented place. In a twist of fate, Suman suffers a cerebral attack and slips into a coma, which brings Meghna and Subhra face to face. While it is not the first time we have witnessed a confrontation between the former and present wives of the male protagonist in contemporary Bengali cinema — Shiboprosad Mukherjee and Nandita Roy’s Praktan (2017) comes to mind — Kaushik Ganguly prevents Ardhangini from becoming a tale of sentimentality. Using a nonlinear storytelling approach, the film explores themes of marital discord while also touching upon the social stigma around an individual’s inability to bear a child.