‘Bittu' is a character-driven drama about a little girl in an impressionable age, written and directed by Karishma Dube. While living in a place relatively distant from a flourishing civilization, Bittu's world is also relatively smaller. Her hopes and joys do not take much to satisfy either. Even if some tourists mockingly ask her to sing a rather regressive regional song, she will sing just for that momentary praise. The foul lyrics would hardly matter for a young girl whose whole life revolves around an effort to match the outer world's growth and to be worthy of some kind of appreciation. She lives in a place where a basic knowledge of the English language has to be given by engaging kids like her with sounds, for the lack of exposure.
“Bittu“ is screening at Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles
Bittu studies in such a school from her area and in the meantime, roams around with her close friend, Chand. Due to her occasional antics, she comes off as a fierce girl who does not pay heed to the teachers' opinions about her. Even while the teacher scolds her for not paying attention, she answers back without a fear in mind. She does not engage in anything half-heartedly and smiles cheek-to-cheek on her own mischief. And even her close friend cannot come before her pride. In all of her playful acts, there is an obvious innocence that is expected from someone of her age. Due to that, even a bittersweet incident involving her friend brings out their fondness for one another even more.
More than anything, director Karishma Dube succeeds in capturing the ethos of that place. A certain organic quality is achieved to the point of making it seem like a neorealist portrait of the place, where the actors are playing counterparts of their real-life personalities. For a cast predominantly consisting of non-actors, what we see is mostly what they would be comfortable in revealing. The shots are chosen carefully for taking the point across without any overt emphasis.
Thanks to the editing done by the director along with Colin Elliott, the film never loses the core human element. Even the occasional abrupt cuts serve some purpose with respect to the character arcs. Shot by Shreya Dube, the compositions from the film appear a little too close to the subject, almost suffocating the whole space. There is an undying feeling that we are entering into the personal spaces of these characters.
The camerawork places us in such a way that we understand Bittu's pain, joys, and sorrows by walking in her shoes. In result, it becomes an ode to the childhood where the tiniest heartaches can feel like gigantic losses. In this case, our heart breaks for Bittu whose life shifts for an occurrence of negligence that was beyond her control.
