Santosh (2024)

Recently widowed and facing the loss of her home, the eponymous woman (Shahana Goswami) is offered a chance to take over her late husband's job as a police officer. Having basically inherited his post without any training, her first task is to work with the no-nonsense "Insp. Sharma" (Sunita Rajwar) on an horrific case in which a young girl has been brutally raped and unceremoniously dumped in a fairly lawless area of Northern India. Disgusted by the crime and by the societal attitudes of many of those the investigations touches - who mostly couldn't care less - we alight on a candidate for the crime and what ensues tests not just her mettle as a police officer but her own morals as the methods of interrogation employed by her new boss are not exactly court-ordered. That's the potent thrust of this film for me, and I didn't find that to sit so easily. The atrocity of the crime is symptomatic of cultural attitudes amidst a society where women are little better than chattels to be used and disposed of by men as required. The question of ethics starts to loom large, though, when the suspect is treated with a brutality that asks whether two wrongs make a right. It's a sort of vigilante justice that pays scant, if any, regard for due process and begs huge questions which are addressed quite poignantly at the very denouement of this quite harrowing and thought-provoking drama. The acting itself is all adequate enough but I thought Goswani relied too much on long pauses and silences to convey the sense of conflict faced by her character as the plot developed. She's not helped by the staccato writing that can hit some potent notes at times, but for the most part seems content to let what we are seeing do the work - and that left me feeling a little uneasy about the retributive elements of the drama. There's no doubt that it does provoke a conversation about women's rights in India and about their appalling position within a male-dominated hierarchy, but is throwing the rule of law under the police bus the answer?