Panchavati (1986)

Panchavati is a 1986 Hindi drama by Basu Bhattacharya, the director of Teesri Kasam and of a celebrated trilogy of films about marriage, Anubhav, Avishkaar and Griha Pravesh. Deepti Naval plays a wife whose husband, played by Suresh Oberoi, is too wrapped up in himself to notice her loneliness, and whose emotional life changes when another man (Akbar Khan) enters it. In keeping with Bhattacharya's style, the film is intimate and talk-driven, more interested in the silences between a couple than in melodrama. It belongs to the middle cinema of the 1980s, between art-house and mainstream, and gives Deepti Naval one of her more searching roles.