Tritio Adhyay review: Romantic thriller turns into a depressing tale of two psychopaths

Manoj Michigan’s Tritio Adhyay is far from a successful experiment with a romantic thriller. The film is rather depressing and hardly provides moments of relief. The first half of the film appears extremely amateurish with an outdated concept of love that even turns unrealistic at times.

In order to generate suspense, Michigan parallely runs the past and the present of the protagonists, not establishing a link between the two, intentionally. However, this pattern rather seems to puzzle as on the one hand, the story appears to be extremely predictable and on the other hand, the director deliberately drags the experiment with the plot progression, ultimately to deliver a climax that is not at all unexpected.

Koushik (Abir Chaterjee) travels to a village in Jharkhand to apparently search for an author called SK Mukerjee, who he claims to be his lost father. Koushik has a hideous demeanour and his intentions always appear to be dubious. As he bumps into Mukherjee’s novel Pratham Adhyay — a passionate love story, the film goes into flashback, revealing the whirlwind love story of a young couple.

The love story is narrated with reference to the pages and chapters from the book. Protagonist Ritwick (Sourav Das) deliberately fails at college so that he can study with his girlfriend Mou (Arunima Halder) at the same class. Ritwick is not only against physical intimacy, but is also almost averse to being touched by his girlfriend.

Both of them are mere college students yet they are extremely eager to meet each other’s parents. While Ritwick is often known for running away from his home for unknown reasons, Mou hardly reveals her hometown. Mou is almost psychopathic as she cuts herself as revenge when her mother refuses to pay a visit to her.

Simultaneously, while looking for Mukherjee, Koushik comes across Shreya (Paoli Dam) in the village and begins to hunt her as well. The couple from the story book separate from predictable reasons and in the present time, Koushik eventually locates Shreya, who agrees to spend time with him after a lot of entreaties.

As Koushik makes a confession to Shreya, who happened to be his girlfriend, the plot also takes a twist. A lot of incidents from Koushik’s past appear to be over-the-top and others do not make sense. For example, Koushik is seen to be eating bread, sitting on the streets. A hungry girl comes and looks at his bread. Koushik not only gives her the bread but also hands over the gold chain from his neck.

Quite naturally a goon comes and snatches away the chain from the little girl. First of all, why was Koushik living in such a miserable situation if he had the gold chain? Secondly, does any sensible person hand over a gold chain to a street child? The following incidents seem to be even more absurd that turn the character of Koushik into nothing, but a psychopath as well.

The screenplay of the film is extremely slow and the unfolding of the climax tests the patience of the audience a great deal. The inhuman characteristics of both the protagonists don’t send chills down the spine, they only turn the experience of watching the film bitter. Though Michigan eventually establishes the connection between the love story from the book and the incidents from the present time at a much later stage of the second half, it is quite easy to sense the relation much earlier.

Abir Chatterjee doesn’t seem to mould himself much as the grey shades of his character demand. Though the script doesn’t allow her to show her acting prowess much, Paoli Dam still manages to retain a mysterious aura about her character.

Sourav Das is extremely natural as an amateurish yet stubborn lover, while Arunima Halder needs to work on her performances more.

Supriyo Dutta does a decent job in bringing alive the beauty of the village and captures the days of college with the young lovers well.

The song 'Hazar Bochor' by Papon and Meghna Mishra is a very catchy and urbane composition that adds to the romance between Ritwick and Mou and also brings alive the missing passion between Koushik and Shreya. The background score by Arin Prasenjit Das syncs well with the sequences of the film.