Year: 2024

Runtime: 120 minutes

Written and directed by: Sandhya Suri

Starring: Shahana Goswami, Sunita Rajwar

By Sarah Manvel

While “All We Imagine As Light” grabbed most of the attention at this year’s Cannes Film Festival by being the movie in competition made by a female Indian director, “Santosh,” which was also made by a female Indian director was also in competition (in the Un Certain Regard strand, though it didn’t win anything). “Santosh” is a tougher and less stereotypically feminine story, with its crime thriller setting involving bouts of terrible violence. But it’s also a movie in which the two main characters are not motivated by relationships with men, but instead their relationship with each other. It’s also been a very long time since a movie from anywhere in the world has been so focused on how women can work together. But at its core “Santosh” is about a woman who doesn’t want to do the things the world wishes her to do, and how she must learn to be true to herself. It’s an unusual story handled with unusual thoughtfulness.

Santosh (Shahana Goswami) has been left isolated in northern India after her policeman husband was killed in a riot. Her in-laws blame her for his death and her own family lives far away, but luckily the government has a scheme for women in her position. She can take over her husband’s job and work as a police officer herself, with her husband’s salary and pension matched, and continuing to live in a small house on the police base. The older officers hint that she should help out their wives with their housekeeping, but her official work would be ‘women’s duties,’ largely patrolling public parks to separate courting couples. Santosh makes the best of it. On one of her patrols, she comes across an illiterate lower-caste man seeking help in making a complaint against the police. His teenage daughter has been missing for two days and because of their caste the officers he’s spoken to have refused to investigate. Santosh helps him, despite the laughter of her male colleagues, and when the girl’s body is found, Santosh is the only officer willing to deliver it to the coroner. When it turns out the girl was raped and murdered, suddenly Santosh is in way over her head.

When the crime is confirmed, a new senior arrival, Inspector Sharma (Sunita Rajwar) is brought in to lead the investigation and also act as its public face. The media criticism for the original police failures are intense so there’s huge pressure to solve this fast. Soon a suspect is identified: a young Muslim man with whom the girl was secretly texting. But the young man has gone on the run, and suddenly some real detective work will be needed in order to find him. Even though Santosh is inexperienced, her involvement at the start of the case gives her some rights, and Inspector Sharma also tells her that she wants to support all her sisters in policing. So they get to work. Ms Goswami does an excellent job of showing Santosh doggedly pursuing the clues she has, considering new information with a sharpness that surprises herself, and then adjusting tactics instantly as needed. The sequences where she walks through the low-caste village, gleaning information from its residents simply by showing up and listening, make detective work (and treating people with respect) seem easy. It becomes clear Santosh is actually really good at this, with the ability to hear what people are really communicating and to think through what it means for the case. The trouble comes when Santosh goes against her better judgement. 

When the chips are down, writer-director Sandhya Suri made the right choice. That is to say, what Santosh chooses to do is not the right thing, or the most cinematic thing, but instead the most normal one. In the moment cinematographer Lennert Hillege keeps the camera on Santosh, moving as she moves, so we can feel exactly what it’s costing her to act in this way. Most movies would have taken the easy way out, either by having the character act against human nature, or so cinematically that the melodrama would have won. Instead Santosh has to learn an extremely painful but essential lesson and then figure out how to carry that knowledge forward. The interplay between her and Inspector Sharma is loaded in ways we only fully appreciate as Santosh does, which requires some cunning acting from Ms Rajwar. While Santosh matures into full understanding, Sharma is waiting to see whether that will push Santosh into the direction she wants. 

What’s most refreshing is that, when Santosh make her choices, the reason is not a wish for justice for the murdered girl or the memory of her dead husband. It’s her wish to do the right thing for herself. She gets to be a person, in a way which men often are in movies and women much less. And it’s this, despite the grim storyline and the violence therein, that remains when “Santosh” is over. It’s a refreshing achievement.