The Indo-British feminist noir is becoming a cliché of its own. Think The Buckingham Murders (2023), Ulajh (2024) and Badla (2019). Set in hazy British towns, these films are mostly fronted by a flawed female protagonist trying either to solve a case or clear her name, battling inner demons as well as a patriarchal system. She wears long overcoats when she feels confident and goes for a run in a hoodie while trying to work out a problem in her head. The weather is always sunless, reflecting the greyness of its characters. The issue isn’t just the repetitive aesthetics. This micro-genre deals with an Indian woman’s standing in society, how the powerful amongst them are perceived and how much they are allowed to be vulnerable. But what it also does is pull out the Indian woman from an Indian context. The themes become more universal and thus lose out on their sharp specificity. Points don’t hit home because events are unfolding so far away from it.
Starring: Konkona Sensharma, Pratibha Ranta and Sukant Goel
Directed by: Anubhuti Kashyap
Written by: Sima Agarwal and Yash Keswani
Streaming on: Netflix
In director Anubhuti Kashyap’s sophomore feature Accused, Konkona Sensharma plays Geetika, a woman-in-power gynaecologist who is great at her job and as it is the case with most overachieving individuals, she is stern, rude and has limited tolerance for incompetence. Resultantly, she often rubs both colleagues and subordinates the wrong way. Geetika is married to her lesbian partner Meera (Laapataa Ladies fame Pratibha Ranta), a soft-spoken paediatrician. The couple is looking forward to a new chapter in their lives as Geetika has bagged the position of a dean at a hospital in a different city and moreover, they are also trying to adopt a baby. Their best laid plans, however, are thwarted soon when multiple anonymous emails are received by Geetika’s employer hospital, accusing her of sexual harassment. It opens a can of worms from Geetika’s past that threatens to ruin her relationship with Meera and also her long-standing reputation.
For most of its runtime, Accused operates like an edge-of-the-seat thriller which is both its strength and undoing. Surely, the viewer is hooked but they are more inclined towards finding the perpetrator rather than understanding and imbibing the points the film actually wants to make. We are more concerned with finding the puzzle pieces than observing the picture they finally make. With keyed-up scenes, the film often feels like it is trying to appease the algorithm. Thus, the film’s themes are sacrificed at the altar of the thrills.
Viewed purely as a riveting thriller, Accused does have some merits. It’s fast-paced, engaging and you are eager to know what comes next. Konkona gives a layered performance as Geetika, a woman so high on power that she actually starts behaving like a man. As a character, Geetika is interestingly written. She gets the freedom to be flawed and her moral manoeuvrings make for a delicious watch. Pratibha Ranta as Meera provides a balance to the assertive Geetika but doesn’t get her own shine much.
Accused hits upon urgent, relevant themes to ponder upon. In their fight against patriarchy do strong, independent women sometimes themselves become the system? How easy is it to tarnish anybody’s image in the age of social media and how man-woman dynamics have to do with not just gender but also power differences. Director Anubhuti Kashyap’s opinions are fresh but their depiction is rudimentary. The essence of the film is often spelt out in shoddily written dialogues. Accused seems to be functioning as two films: one is a pacy thriller with enough twists and turns while the other is just a bunch of theatrical monologues and the two don’t blend evenly. Accused would have benefited if it had enough breathers, more space for character development and pauses so that the points made get time to linger. The woman in the hoodie doesn’t necessarily have to run past her problems, she can, probably, sit with her feelings on a park bench.