Rehana Maryam Noor premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the ongoing 74th Cannes Film Festival
Cast: Azmeri Haque Badhon, Afia Jahin Jaima, Kazi Sami Hassan
Director: Abdullah Mohammad Saad
Rating: 4.5 stars
The coalescence of text, texture, tone and technique in writer-director Abdullah Mohammad Saad's Rehana Maryam Noor is felicitously flawless. But the film's fiercely self-willed titular protagonist is up against a world that is far from perfect. Her sturdy moral fibre repeatedly collides with the dispiriting ethical laxity around her. The conflict yields bruising, rapier-sharp drama.
Saad's chiselled screenplay, Tuhin Tajimul's restless handheld camera, the muted colour palette and a deeply affecting central performance from Azmeri Haque Badhon combine to lend the film an unsettling emotional force.
The first-ever film from Bangladesh in the Cannes official selection, Rehana Maryam Noor has a cold, calculated, claustrophobic feel. The sustained tinge of blue in its visuals is a wonderfully felicitous artistic choice. It enhances the film's stylistic austerity and thematic acuteness.
Rehana Maryam Noor, an assistant professor of medicine, is a single mother and the sole breadwinner of a family made up of a young daughter, her parents and a jobless brother. She takes on a male colleague, Dr. Arefin (Kazi Sami Hasan), in a case of sexual misconduct, stirring a hornet's nest in the process.
Rehana witnesses a female student rushing out of the professor's office in distress. She figures out what must have happened in the room, springs to the girl's aid and offers to stand by her. Rehana's resolve is both admirable and disquieting. Her altruism is commendable but the decisions she makes border on the impulsive.
She is ostensibly driven by a mix of obsession and obstinacy - or, that is what the errant man would want to believe in order to save his own skin.
Rehana isn't one to back off. Her fight is for a cause that merits, and gets, all the ferocity at her command, to the consternation of all concerned, including the victim of the unwanted sexual advance, Anika Rehman Annie (Afia Tabassum Borno).
Annie is reluctant to lodge a formal complaint. Her MBBS exams are a month away and she cannot afford any distractions. She pleads with Rehana to keep the incident under wraps. But that isn't an option for the outraged teacher. When all else fails, she decides to pose as the victim in order to bring Arefin to book.
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