Don't let anyone tell you that all Indian films *must* feature a show-stopping song and dance routine. They aren't compulsory and only started to feature latterly in the Bombay-produced mainstream films in an attempt to pull in increasingly bored punters.
Smriti Tuku Thak ("Staying Mrs Tuku"?)centres around a familiar theme in Gothic melodrama - something of a speciality for the doom laden Bengali film industry - of fate, destiny and what happens if someone should be so opportunistic as to try and beat the odds laid out for them. A wealthy couple adopt one of two twin sisters, and she grows up into a talented, vivacious young woman with a flair for painting and bright prospects ahead of her. Some people have all the luck. She is unaware that she has a twin sister growing up in the backwaters of Bengal. She's on her way to visit relatives when tragedy strikes... offering - literally - a once in a lifetime chance for her secret twin - who knows her story - to grab some good luck with both hands.
The incidental music is genuinely eerie and the story, which in other hands would easily have turned into histrionics, is surprisingly compelling, bleak even.
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