I wanted to work again with Swatilekha: Soumitra

Kolkata: Actor Soumitra Chatterjee, who is starring opposite Swatilekha Sengupta 30 years after they paired in Satyajit ray's "Ghare Baire", said he wished they had worked earlier.

The veteran actor plays Swatilekha's husband in Shiboprosad Mukhopadhyay-Nandita Roy's upcoming "Belaseshe".

"I had worked for a long and uninterrupted stretch in different films (ever since Ghare Baire in 1985). Similarly, Swati had been part of one theatre production after another during all these years. So, despite my wishes, we couldn't work together in a film in all these years," Soumitra, Satyajit Ray's favourite actor, said.

The actor, who talked positively about Bengali middle- of-the-road films, said, "In 'Belaseshe' the full throated family entertainment genre of the '50s and '60s is re-invoked bringing a typical flavour.

"The film also refers to the contemporary problems we face in the present day society. In fact, this is how cinema should have been made," he said.The duo enact the role of a lower middle class elderly couple in the film. "I essay the character of a book store owner (Biswanath Majumder) in the prime of his life," Soumitra said adding Swatilekha, who enacts Arati his on-screen wife, needs no introduction as an actor.

In "Ghare Baire", based on Tagore's eponymous work on freedom fighters, Soumitra played the role of Sandip and Swatilekha Bimala, the wife of a patriotic westernized 'zamindar'.