‘The Stranger’ Review: A Quietly Fraught Rural Childhood Comes Alive in a Miniaturist Bangladeshi Drama
variety.comJessica Kiang One of the tiniest lived-in details in Bangladeshi writer-director Biplob Sarkar‘s debut feature — which is really a cluster of tiny, lived-in details — is the sheet of adhesive bindis that Kajal (a delightfully natural Ehan Rashid) snaffles from his mother’s dressing table.
The bindis, or as they’re known in these parts, teeps, are worn by Banglasdeshi women of all creeds and religions, but along with an orangey-pink lipstick also taken from the dresser, for Kajal they represent more than mere cosmetic adornment.
Instead they’re a gateway for Kajal’s inchoate gender expression, the potency of which is belied by the simplicity and smallness of that little red dot between the eyes. “The Stranger” functions in much the same way: a colorful speck of a movie that somehow contains a whole portrait, like a miniature one might find painted on a grain of rice.
Kajal lives in a ramshackle house surrounded by dense jungle in remote rural Bangladesh, with his hardworking seamstress mother Kohinoor (Sahana Rahman Sumi), who is also, in a theme recurring across the Busan Film Festival selection this year, the caregiver for an elderly relative.
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