After the riot-induced death of her policeman husband in the badlands of North India, 30-something widow Santosh Saini (Shahana Goswami) is told she has nothing. Her house, provided by the State, belongs to the State and will be reclaimed, along with nearly everything else she needs to survive. She has no choice but to take advantage of a government program referred to as “compassionate appointment,” in which the bereaved can take on the job of the one they lost. In this case, a housewife becomes an officer of the law overnight.
Meet: the newly minted Constable Santosh. Not long into her tenure she’s forced to face the corruption of fellow officers when a low-caste teenage girl––whose grieving parents had reported her missing and begged local police to find her, only to be laughed out of the station––turns up dead in a well. Evidence that she was raped multiple times suggests the police could have found and saved her, inciting outrage among the lower-castes of the region who know the upper-castes nearby are responsible.
As a result, authorities bring in Chief Inspector Geeta Sharma (Sunita Rajwar), a living legend in the force known for her leader-ly charisma, no-bullshit tactics, and reliability when it comes to finding justice for crimes against women. On her first day on the case, she sits among the chummy male officers––lazy, impudent, and vacuous men whose north star is an antiquated sense of classism and sexism––like she’s one of them. Their immediate and unwavering respect for her is a glowing sign of her gender-hurdling reputation and consuming command over the situation. Naturally, Sharma becomes Santosh’s mentor, much to the newbie’s appreciation.
At first a godsend, Sharma slowly, transparently reveals her corruption to Santosh, putting the outranked constable in a soul-gnawing moral and socio-political predicament that begets the question: what does resistance look like? What has to happen for women and lower-castes to be recognized and treated with dignity? Is corruption in the name of a feminist ethic that seeks egalitarianism true corruption? Or perhaps a just, necessary evil? God and Sharma alike know the institutional degradation of them can’t stand as it has historically.
A taut procedural thriller as bewildering as the ethical conundrum at its core, Santosh marks a major fiction debut for writer-director Sandhya Suri, whose sixth sense for pacing and pregnant tension deserves praise. The deft documentarian inside her infuses realist socio-political implications into the dirty, harsh, one-sided class warfare between the upper- and lower-castes, which illuminates both the grim reality of the untouchables in India and the rosy untouchability of the upper-castes.
The film occasionally stumbles into an emotional distance that keeps one at arm’s length from its subjects, regardless of how you feel about them. Whether intentional or not, it can confuse more than compel. The dim, understated shadow cinematography is also nothing to write home about––nice, yes, if often standard and unremarkable.
Yet its performances, particularly Goswami and Rajwar, rank among this year’s best. It’s hard to imagine Santosh without the perma-glare of slight-yet-stark concern branded on Goswami’s face (see: poster)––the kind of look that keeps you wondering what she’s thinking, what she’ll do next, and how the hell she plans to find a path forward, much less peace, in the rotten web of gender politics, class-clashing, and police malpractice fate has tangled her up in. Goswami gives a subtly powerful performance grounded in perpetual shock, patience to act, and measured wisdom. And the enigmatic screenplay devises a grey area so hazy you’ll be going over it in your head for weeks, if not months, asking yourself what you would’ve done in Santosh’s impossible situation.
Santosh is now in limited release.