Santosh

Gender inequality, caste and police ethics make a compelling combination in this Indian crime drama. Santosh Saini (Shahana Goswami) is the focus from the start. A 28-year-old, her policeman husband has just been killed in riots and her in-laws view her “a cursed witch”, still smarting it seems from the fact that the union between her and their son Raman was a “love marriage”.

A lifeline presents itself in the form of a “compassionate appointment” government scheme, which means she can take on the job of her husband, but what on the surface appears to be a moment of empowerment, turns out to be much more compromised morally than she first imagines. Like recent Nepali film Pooja, Sir this is a crime drama that is less about the acts committed by offenders, or indeed who the perpetrators are, than by the institutional corruption that means justice is hard to come by whichever side of the thin blue line you are on.

Santosh is smart and welcomes the opportunity to take on the job. She might be swimming in a sea of misogyny but the role still elevates her in the eyes of the community. Perhaps that’s why her instinct is to listen to the Dalit man who comes in to report his daughter missing. A caste who face extreme prejudice and are considered “untouchable” by many - and viewers looking to learn more about the prejudice faced might want to track down documentary Writing With Fire - the rest of the squad take little interest. But when the girl turns up dead, a touchpaper is lit within the community.

Forced to be seen to be doing something, a female cop is drafted in to take the lead in the investigation. Inspector Sharma (Sunita Rajwar) is a veteran who understands, for better or worse, how the system works. “Who knows more about performance than us?” she asks Santosh in a key exchange. Writer/director Sandhya Suri - who has a documentary background - is keen to show that everyone plays their part in the prejudices and corruption of the legal system.

Tension runs on dual fuel. First it is fanned by the dubious operational procedure of the police, which Santosh finds herself increasingly beguiled by - possibly, although it's never explicitly talked about, because of the circumstances in which her husband died. Secondly, it is propelled by the shifting relationship between Sharma and Santosh. What initially seems like a mentoring situation, becomes more complex and potentially predatory. Having laid excellent character groundwork - helped by performances from Goswami and Rajwar that crackle with unpredictable energy, Suri takes her film into full blown thriller territory as Santosh zeroes in on a suspect, before moving it back into a more intellectually rigorous consideration of police ethics.

For a noir film, there’s a surprising amount of light and bright colour employed, from saris to the beige officers' uniforms and the paint that gets splashed about during a Holi festival celebration. It has the effect of making the shadowy environments and murky morality all the more grubby. It’s not the corruption itself that proves to be the most damning element of Suri’s film - it’s the general acceptance of it that holds the sting.