Anvita Dutt’s exquisite ‘Qala’, on Netflix, puts us into the state of mind of a disturbed playback singer

Spoilers ahead…

Anvita Dutt’s films do have a story. They have characters and events. And yet, her films are less about “following a plot” than entering a state of mind, a series of spaces painted by her brilliant cinematographer Siddharth Diwan. Like , feels as though we are taking a guided tour of the interiors of someone’s head. Ingmar Bergman said that “ever since my childhood I have pictured the inside of the soul as a moist membrane in shades of red.” It’s something like that. Qala is the name of a famous playback singer, and we see her psyche through the swirls of colours over the opening credits. We see it in the textures of her clothes, in their unvivid shades. We see it in the sets and in the shadows of props and the lanterns on boats and the statues of gargoyles. We see it in a surreal spotlight from the sky. We see it in the snow of Qala’s home in Himachal and in the fringe of her hairstyle, which is often tightly bound. Rarely is her hair let loose.

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