‘The Wrestler’ Review: Metaphors Clash in a Restrained Masculine Saga from Bangladesh

variety.com:

Siddhant Adlakha In Bangladesh, the sport of boli khela — or the wrestler game — is a meticulous, methodical affair, a tone Iqbal H.

Chowdhury re-creates for his debut feature, “The Wrestler.” Straddling a line between observational and oblique, the film seems designed to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure, gesturing toward masculine boundaries in a rural, often overcast coastal setting without fully articulating them.

In leaving much of his story up to intuition — and taking a climactic turn toward the surreal — Chowdhury crafts a scrupulous slow-burn drama about a kind of obsession that, despite being opaque, comes off as entirely tragic.

Its central focus is the elderly wrestler/wrestling trainer Moju (Nasir Uddin Khan), an aging fisherman whose frustrations with his lack of recent catch lead him to challenge local champion Dofor (AKM Itmam).