“Who knows more about performing than us?” Geeta (Sunita Rajwar) tells Santosh (Shahana Gowami) as the two Indian policewomen return from an interrogation in “Santosh,” explaining what really just happened to the less experienced constable as they tried to get information from someone she believed was bluffing. Santosh is already taking on a role she never wanted, compelled to put on the police uniform after her husband’s death in the force left little pension, given how young they both were, and due to a local law, she’s obliged to take his place if she’d like to collect the money sooner, leaving her to scrub the blood off his fatigues from when he was killed in a riot. And while Geeta doesn’t need to tell her that as women in a predominantly male field, they’re already accustomed to a certain level of charades, the occasion of a crime has a way of having everyone dance around the truth, putting those more accustomed to it at an advantage.
Having the two at the center of “Santosh” definitely has its benefits for writer/director Sandhya Suri, whose debut is set apart by its particular societal setting, but brings the strong, familiar pleasures of a Sidney Lumet-style police procedural as Geeta and Santosh are tasked with the investigation of the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl. Santosh actually is literally the first on the case when she’s too new to the police to roll her eyes at any local daring to file a report, first meeting the father of the teen on the street two days after she’s gone missing and although he’s laughed out of the station by the police chief Thakur (Nawal Shukla) after she brings him in, the handling of the case when she turns up dead becomes a public relations nightmare that Thakur hopes to diffuse by importing Geeta, a commanding officer who has a public profile for improving gender equality on the force.
If Santosh’s husband wasn’t killed in the line of duty, she can start to wonder if the stress of the job would’ve done him in instead as she learns she can’t trust anyone and any authority she has seems more of a burden than a power. Seen as an enemy in the long-oppressed Dalit communities she patrols, she is treated with no more respect in a police department where doing any work is perceived as a sign of weakness. When Suri first worked in documentary and initially thought of “Santosh” in that vein before turning to a fictional treatment, the resulting feature seems to yield the best of both worlds when it’s so clearly enriched by a meticulous attention to detail that was surely derived from intense research but enlivened by dramatic flourishes that only enhance the reality of the situation even if they’re transcending reality itself. The chaos of the streets in Nehrat where Santosh returns to the scene of her husband’s death as part of the investigation is elegantly conveyed in a restaurant where she can’t get away from either the sounds or fellow customers staring at her and she needs only look into her mirror where a picture of herself, before tragedy befell her, tucked into the frame to witness her own transformation.
The film is propelled by a riveting turn from Gowami, who is careful to never entirely play the wide-eyed innocent for as many times as Santosh can be taken aback by what she sees and expresses the subtle influence of everyone around her as she decides is her own best chance at survival in this world. Some may find it mildly underwhelming that the case itself may not be as dynamic, if no less complex, as the film’s main character, but as Santosh and Geeta chase down leads and find themselves in dark corners as traditional demands of the genre call for, larger cultural routines are called into question when there’s a difference in who’s leading the investigation and it’s the status quo that’s exposed for creating inequities when the powerful desperately seek to preserve it while those without can’t even get their voices to register. “Santosh” is bold enough to break through, taking after the lead of a character who engages just enough with a system to see its flaws and although it’s a case that threatens to consume her whole, it’s absorbing in another way for audiences.
“Santosh” will open on December 27th in New York at the IFC Center.