Based on a short story by Bengali writer Prafulla Roy, the central idea developed by director Dasgupta, tells the story of a girl, Lati, whose mother Rajani is a prostitute living and working in a brothel in rural India. Rajani plans to offer her daughter to an older man, a rich husband and protector to her daughter. Lati, however, wants to return to school and finish her studies. Unwilling to pay such a price for material success, she runs away to Calcutta. The discovery of this new world is described parallel to other stories of emancipation, such as that of three young prostitutes, of an aged couple going nowhere and man's landing on the moon. In a surrealistic approach typical of the director, a clumsy cat and an intelligent donkey are also present in the film. Ganesh works full-time as a driver for wealthy Bengali-speaking, Natabar Paladhi, who lives in a mansion with his wife, children and grandchildren, and runs 'Anjali Cinema' He has Ganesh use his vehicle as a private taxi cab. Amongst Ganesh's customers are a woman named Bakul, who alights near a town of Gosaipara to take up prostitution with Jamunabai; an abandoned elderly couple who are in need of hospitalization — there is none in the vicinity, and they end up secretly riding with Ganesh all the time; while Natabar uses this vehicle to travel to Gosaipara to visit a prostitute named Rajani and negotiate with her so that he can have her 14-year-old daughter, Lati, as his mistress. Things get complicated when Lati rebels against her mother so she can return to school, and a prostitute is about to get killed by her vengeful husband.
Directors like Dasgupta make movies that are very specific to their own cultural milieu. A great master like the late Satyajit Ray was never comfortable when he stepped outside his native Bengal with his camera. So too Dasgupta. His latest work, Mondo Meyer Upakhyan, is set in his favourite Purulia, a backward region in West Bengal. Beyond these main travails of Lati, Dasgupta presents a gripping account of village life. On Dasgupta's canvas, one witnesses life in all its splendour. A Tale of a Naughty Girl is undoubtedly a piece of celluloid that elevates cinema to another realm. It is extremely positive, and probably comes from a deep sense of peace and tranquillity that Dasgupta must have achieved from his poetic inclination.
