Tilotama Shome breathes acting. The 45-year-old actress is yet again being praised for her performance in her latest film Shadowbox (Baksho Bondi), which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival. Set against the backdrop of a dusty Kolkata suburb, the film is a powerful narrative of love, resilience, and the quiet strength of a working woman. The film’s co-director, Saumyananda Sahi, complimented her performance in a recent interview, saying that the actress, ‘with her puny frame, is so much larger than she is in real life.’ Ask Shome what she thinks of these words of praise showered upon her, and she says, “That is the power of the transformation of cinema, that can endow a short person with great emotional verticality.”
Watching Shome transform herself into Maya, a woman juggling several jobs in order to support her family, is pure joy for a true cinema lover. The actress brings quiet strength to her role, endowing her character with grace and vulnerability at the same time. Shome says it was all in the script and in the many women who shaped us. “I was often not dignified or graceful during my years as a caregiver. I broke down with anger or grief,” she adds. The actress adds that Maya is an amalgamation of the long corridor of women that the directors and she have known.
“A line of women who laboured long and hard every day of their lives. We know them intimately; they are family. We struggled as a family with my uncle’s long-time undiagnosed mental distress, until it was too late and he had to live in an assisted living facility. All these residues from my life and the lives of Somo (Saumyananda Sahi) and Tanushree (Das) flower like thick rivers, which led us to shaping Maya. Playing Maya was the much-needed catharsis after a few years of being a caregiver and my life felt ready for a part like this,” she says.
The Bengali film had its world premiere at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival, where the actress said that she was thrilled to hear the sounds made by a row of German women when Maya lashes out at her son in exhaustion and says, ‘I need to eat. I am human’. “That for me was everything, the shared experience of women who are just tired,” she states.
Prior to this, Shome was seen as SP Meghna Barua in season 2 of Paatal Lok. The actress shot for the film a few days after filming the series and is glad that the makers of Paatal Lok ensured that her portions were shot in time for her to start her film shoot. “It is really nice to work with professionals who are not just good at what they do but have a normal-sized, healthy ego,” she says, adding that it was a great experience to work with an A team such as Paatal Lok.
Shome, who made her debut with Monsoon Wedding in 2001 and has been a part of critically acclaimed projects such as Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost, A Death in the Gunj, Manto and Sir, and shows such as Delhi Crime and The Night Manager, has spoken earlier about the long waiting period between getting good roles. “You get better at recognising your crap and your hurtful patterns, but you still have to fight it tooth and nail.” There is more to look forward to from the talented artiste, she promises. “Everything good in my life has taken time. The two films I am excited about will take a long time. Meanwhile, I am keeping myself busy with something of my own,” she says, keeping her cards close to her heart.