The most elegant of all Ray’s films and also one of his best-known and most appreciated.

The screenplay is adapted from “Nastanirh” (“The Broken Nest”), a story by Rabindranath Tagore.

The film is set in Calcutta, circa 1880. The beautiful Charulata idles her life away in an opulent Victorian mansion, secluded from the outside world. Her husband, Bhupati, an idealistic intellectual, is adoring and supportive. However, he is consumed by the publication of his new political newspaper and is unable to spend time with Charulata. When his younger cousin, Amal, arrives, Bhupati enlists his help to cultivate Charulata’s latent creativity in writing. An increasingly intimate relationship develops between Charulata and Amal which in the beginning is based on complicity and writing, but eventually develops into love.

“The Lonely Wife” is a paean to love, idealism, disillusionment and heartbreak.