Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri

As Arjun Dutta’s Deep Fridge , which won the National Award for the Best Feature Film in Bengali, gets a theatrical release, I look at his haunting, restrained and introspective exploration of love, guilt, and the emotional ice we live inside – and what it takes to melt it.

Ice Cube

Deep Fridge unfolds as a quiet chamber drama that simmers under the surface of everyday interactions. Swarnava (Abir Chatterjee) and his ex‑wife Mili (Tnusree Chakraborty) are brought together unexpectedly on a storm-soaked night after five years apart, drawing them into a fragile emotional stasis. Swarnava arrives at Mili’s place to care for their sick son Tatai while their once-married lives spiral in separation.

Abir Chatterjee’s Swarnava is immediately arrested in emotional ice. His performance is subtle, underplayed, and eclipsed by the emotional weight he carries – caught between guilt, residual love, and the complex ties to both his past and present. In this frozen state, his rigidity speaks louder than any dialogue. There is a stillness in his eyes and posture that embodies a man insulated from feeling, except when circumstances threaten to crack open the chilly reserve he has maintained.

The symbolism of the ‘deep fridge’ is introduced here, a metaphor for emotions that have been refrigerated, frozen inside, hidden to maintain composure. The analogical use of the broken freezer is smart but perhaps underdeveloped, the metaphor isn’t as fully realized as it could be. Though it fits Swarnava’s character who has long put away his turbulence in emotional cold storage. What is admirable is the restraint of the treatment, looking at infidelity, as one review mentioned, ‘through a restrained lens, bereft of the melodrama or the expected sleaze … a matured take of two individuals trying their best to move on’. This layer of subtlety creates a powerful contrast. The ice remains intact, yet you feel the latent heat of what once was, and what might still be.

Melting Point

As the narrative progresses, Swarnava and Mili begin to speak again, first in monosyllables, then in halting conversation about their divorce, fears, regrets, and the lingering affection between them. The film’s emotional core unfolds here: both characters are victims of societal illusions about the ‘perfect marriage’, and now they navigate the uneven terrain of guilt, closure, and yearning. Abir’s performance at this stage begins to thaw. Small cracks appear in his emotional armour. A fleeting look, a subtle hesitation, a brief softness in his voice: these signals carry volumes.

Stylistically, the film’s sound design plays with perspective, dynamically shifting with the emotional temperature of the characters. The cinematography, layered with subtext and emotion, hints at swelling feelings behind the frozen façade. The broken refrigerator hums like a ghost in every frame, reminding us that beneath the emotional frost lies unresolved heat.

In this melting point, Swarnava’s internal conflict is at its most compelling. He is torn between two allegiances: the present life with Ronja, to whom he is now married, and who is expecting his child, and the persistent connection with Mili, mother of his son, and the emotional hold she still has on him. His marriage’s collapse, precipitated by infidelity, has split his emotional loyalties, and these split loyalties are simmering, waiting to either thaw or shatter.

Defrost

The resolution, or perhaps the release, in Deep Fridge comes as Swarnava and Mili face each other across the oppositional spaces of their shared past and diverging futures. Abir Chatterjee, at this moment, sheds his emotional armour, allowing vulnerability to surface. His restraint pays off: a softened gaze, a tremor in his voice, a slight weakening of posture. It’s a performance that doesn’t shout, but instead whispers, and those whispers echo. Abir Chatterjee’s portrayal of a man fractured by conflicting loyalties, carrying the weight of past mistakes and the warmth of buried love, is both haunting and tender. He lives inside the emotional freeze, and his patient, layered journey from ice-cold detachment to emotional thawing is searingly real.

While Tnusree Chakraborty is praiseworthy for her range and impact, Abir’s internal struggle provides the film’s emotional thrust. Tnusree Chakraborty has a meaty role, and she delivers a fine performance, nuanced and quietly powerful, though not without its limitations as certain emotional peaks don’t land as strongly as they could have. She plays a woman hardened by a painful divorce and childhood struggles, someone who has bottled up her emotions and finds it difficult to express vulnerability. She brings authenticity to Mili’s internal conflict, her love for her ex-husband, her attempts to move on, the guilt, the longing. However, it is Abir’s Swarnava that anchors the film’s emotional journey.

The Restaurant Sequence

Nowhere better than the restaurant scene, one of the film’s most charged and subversive moments – emotionally, thematically and ideologically. It plays like a quiet confrontation, not through raised voices or overt accusation, but through the weight of unspoken pain and the power of positional silence.

This scene is where the film tilts the axis of our sympathies ever so slightly, revealing deeper layers of its characters. It features Mili, Swarnava and their close friend – a lawyer, and notably, a woman – who speaks on behalf of Swarnava. She tries to reason with Mili, pleading that the break-up of the marriage shouldn’t be the end. Her words, well-meaning though they may appear, are startling and quietly infuriating.

What makes this scene so potent is the unexpected voice of complicity. It’s not a male friend or Swarnava himself making the case for reconciliation, but a woman, speaking to another woman, asking her to ‘understand’ the context of a man’s betrayal. She insists that Swarnava is a good man who made a mistake, and that Mili should reconsider walking away, not just for herself, but for the sake of their child.

The lawyer’s tone is calm and rational, but it cuts deeply, precisely because it reflects the internalized gender politics so common in society. Coming from a woman, it feels like betrayal layered atop betrayal. It reinforces the societal pressure placed on women to absorb emotional damage, to make room for male weakness, and to prioritize the family over their own self-worth.

Her argument doesn’t rely on grand justifications but on that old, quietly toxic logic: “He still loves you,” “He didn’t mean to hurt you,” “Isn’t one mistake forgivable?” These rationalizations are familiar and deeply gendered, and by putting them in the mouth of a female character, the film cleverly exposes how patriarchy isn’t upheld only by men, but often perpetuated and normalized by women too.

What makes the sequence even more brilliant is Abir Chatterjee’s performance, without a single line of dialogue. Swarnava sits there, silent, bearing the weight of the conversation, the accusations, the defences. His silence is not neutral. It is active, brimming with tension and shame. He avoids eye contact, fidgets slightly, and swallows hard as his friend speaks for him. There is no smugness or entitlement; instead, Abir plays him as a man who knows he has erred, but who also cannot undo the consequences of his actions.

And yet, his silence is deeply humanizing. He isn’t hiding behind it. He’s crumbling beneath it. Every small gesture, from the tightening of his jaw to the restrained blinking, communicates his internal battle. He doesn’t defend himself, perhaps because he knows there is no defence. Abir allows his character to be painfully, honestly accountable, even when the script gives him no words.

In a film full of quiet exchanges and emotional restraint, this scene is the emotional fulcrum, and Abir’s silence is its most eloquent statement. It’s a rare feat of screen acting to hold presence and command empathy in a scene where others are speaking on your behalf, and still make it your moment. Abir does just that.

The film doesn’t opt for melodramatic catharsis. It instead chooses a quiet release. The couple’s acknowledgment of pain and need for closure becomes their mutual defrosting. In the end, Swarnava’s emotional thaw is not a return to love, but a release from regret and frozen longing. The defrost doesn’t promise happily ever after. It promises clarity, healing, and a path toward a guilt-free future for both of them separately, and for their child Tatai.

Deep Fridge stands out in Bengali cinema for its quiet intensity, emotional subtlety, and poetic restraint. Nonetheless, the film is not without its flaws. The dialogue occasionally leans towards forced lyricism at odds with the film’s understated tone. And the fridge symbolism, though smart, occasionally feels underexplored. Some dialogue feels overly poetic or forced, adding verbosity to scenes that might have benefited from stillness. This reveals a tension between the film’s sparse, intimate aesthetic and the occasional attempt to verbalize the unsaid.

But these criticisms are minor in a film that prefers subtlety over spectacle. Deep Fridge is a mature, reflective exploration of infidelity, separation and emotional imprisonment, and ultimately, emotional liberation. It is less about dramatic crescendos and more about the soft defrosting of hearts, and it captures that delicate, painful moment beautifully. After his affecting debut Abayakto, Arjun Dutta came up with two films that, while competently made, did not do justice to what his debut promised. With Deep Fridge, he makes a much-needed course correction.