Widow takes up her husband's job in the Indian police, becoming one of the few female faces in this hardened, testosterone-fuelled environment - from the 4th Red Sea International Film Festival
Shahana Goswami stars as the eponymous character, an Indian woman offered the rank and job her spouse left behind. The incentive for Santosh is largely a financial one: not only will she retain her widow pension, but also she will earn an imperturbable salary on top. The offer prompts the bereaved spouse into action, although she is frightened to discover that class divisions still hold an iron grasp over the country‘s citizens.
Goswami delivers as the low-key lady thrust into the middle of a male-dominated profession. Like Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991), Santosh has to settle for the dirty looks and patronising jokes made by her colleagues on the police force. In an effort to match the bravado, Santosh starts acting in a cruller, more combative manner while interrogating suspects suspects, an action that impresses her superior officer Sharma (Sunita Rajwar). Determined to catch a rapist, Santosh and Sharma bandy together, but the further into the depth of hell they go, the harder it is to distinguish which from which. There are two bands of criminal in this part of India: there are the types “people don’t want to touch” – not forgetting a category of culprit “who can’t be touched.”
British-Indian director Sandhya Suri’s debut is an uncompromising, no-holds barred drama that never hesitates from depicting the physical violence in a decisive, direct fashion. No teas are made, there are no “good cops” to cry on: criminals are beaten to an inch of their lives. Santosh’s role is that of protagonist and eye for the audience. She frowns, furrows, smirks; motions the audience is going through at the time. But behind the idealist comes a mercenary, another constable who has the skillset and the emotional stability for the job.
Santosh faces discrimination, internally and externally. She has to put up with put downs from co-workers – some of them women – because of the manner in which she received her job. She gets asked: “Didn’t they teach you that at police school?”. Worse, there are crowds of impoverished people who berate her for the neglect that has been put on them, due to their “illiterate” nature. The only character who supports Santosh is Sharma, offering feedback and food over late night dinner routines. Sharma was something of a pioneer in her younger days, having set up an all female squad thirty years prior. As the film progresses, Santosh sees another side to Sharma, one that could just as easily fit in a political arena as it does in the field.
Suri’s first feature as a director is solid, albeit uneven, affair. There are problems with lighting, editing and suspense; especially evident in one scene where Sharma tries to take down a vagrant singing in the shadows. On the other hand, Suri has a preternatural instinct for storytelling; a streamlined synopsis replete with texture, motif and contradiction. Robbed of her jewellery, Santosh is encouraged to wear a nose ring, an emblem solidifying Santosh’s commitment to the job. Superimposing the image of a ring – a union, between two fingers – Suri juxtaposes contrasting story diversions to create a more opaque take on the procedural drama.
When Santosh and Sharma put their uniform on, they intend to wear it with the professionalism it requires. “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” Sharma reminds Santosh, instilling the junior gendarme with Mahatma Gandhi’s core philosophy. The department dresses well, but they also punch with a force driven to raise blood out of the most hardened of nostrils. Standards have their place, and as two lone women in a patriarchal country, they rise to the occasion with ruthless pragmatism and a penchant for justice. Santosh is an occasionally brutal watch, and a very good one.
Santosh premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 77th Cannes International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. Also showing in the 4th edition of the Red Sea International Film Festival.
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