Mrinal Sen marked the beginning of India's own New Wave with Bhuvan Shome, his first Hindi film and the first low-budget "art" film to be financed by the government; its success encouraged further government sponsorship and the flowering of India's so-called "parallel cinema." The story, set in Gujarat in the late forties, immediately after independence, satirizes the morality which still dominated Indian society. It is a gentle comedy about a duty-bound bureaucrat (Utpal Dutt), a relic of Indian Victoriana, who finds new freedom in the simplicity of village life. Sen found one of his most charming and surprising characters in Gauri, the saucy village girl (played by Suhasini Mulay) who brings a sense of the eccentric into the life of the blue-nose Bhuvan.