★★
“A policewoman’s lot, is not a happy one…”
This takes place in the Indian city of Delhi, and despite the title and the poster, is really about two policewomen, almost equally. Title billing goes to Soni (Ohlyan), a young officer who is coming to terms with life after divorce from her husband, Naveen (Shukla). She is also the possessor of a fierce temper, which repeatedly gets her into trouble because she’s unable to keep her cool with suspects. Forced to play clean-up is her boss, superintendent Kalpana Ummat (Batra), who seems to see something of her younger self in Soni, as well as appreciating the junior cop’s potential. But there’s only so far she can protect Soni from the consequences of her outbursts.
Ayr is going for a documentary feel here, using a lot of hand-held camera and single takes, which makes it seem as if the movie is following the characters, rather than them acting as directed. The problem is that there just isn’t enough in the script to sustain interest: we are not, for example, following Soni through the investigation of one particular case which could have acted as a common thread, tying things together. Instead, we get a series of semi-random incidents, which are more or less the same. Soni gets involved in an incident. Soni loses her temper after a man says something bad to her. Soni hits the man. Her superior officer has to deal with the aftermath. There are at least three cycles of the above, which is probably two too many. She literally can’t even go to the bathroom, without a fight breaking out.
That said, the policing aspects are still quite interesting, and I don’t envy either of the women, doing what has to be a thankless job; if this depiction is correct, Indian society is still inhabiting the Stone Age as far as gender equality is concerned. But even that aside, you’re picking the bones out of cases which are rarely clear-cut. For instance, one alleged sexual assault here might be nothing more than a dispute about rent, as Soni suspects, or may be legitimate, as Kalpana reckons. Figuring out the truth in these situations is as much an art as a science, and it’s here, as well as in negotiating the shoals of political influence, where the movie works best.
Unfortunately, it’s dragged down heavily, by the weight of the two women’s personal lives, which are tedious and uninteresting. Soni’s ex-husband keeps trying to get them back together; Kalpana has to deal with a husband, also a police officer, who outranks her, and a mother-in-law who is demanding grandchildren. This is all sub-telenovela rubbish, and doesn’t seem to add any informative or enlightening angles to either character. It also becomes more than slightly monotonous in its gender depictions, with men shown almost inevitably as lecherous, venal, corrupt or, at the very least, blindly indifferent. The lack of any true conclusion may be “realistic,” yet instead provides a final nail in the coffin.
Dir: Ivan Ayr
Star: Geetika Vidya Ohlyan, Saloni Batra, Vikas Shukla, Mohit S. Chauhan