I've tried to explore the feminine, says Aparna Sen

Though the trailer of the film gleams with giggles, there are undercurrents of anguish in Aparna Sen’s latest work, Sonata. In the film, Aparna plays a woman who has turned her back on love, Lilette Dubey plays a woman trapped in an abusive marriage, and Shabana Azmi’s character unravels layers after layers of closeted yearnings.

It also has Aparna’s real-life husband Kalyan Sen, being yanked out of his academic kingdom to play his wife’s long-standing love interest. This is not the first time that Aparna has invited her husband to face the camera. In Paroma, Aparna’s then-husband Mukul Sharma had played Raakhee Gulzar’s lover.

Sonata, a 103-minute film, is adapted from a play by Mahesh Elkunchwar, that revolves around the lives of three friends. Says Aparna Sen, “In this film I have attempted to explore the various aspects of the feminine. To make that exploration wider in its scope, I introduced two minor characters apart from the three single women who are the protagonists — a maid, thereby cutting across class borders, and a transgender woman. None of these characters were there in the original play by Mahesh Elkunchwar, of which the film is an adaptation. I also changed the ending by bringing into the lives of these women a tragedy of global magnitude, which not only places their personal anxieties in perspective, but also strengthens the bond of friendship among them.”