Santosh review – carefully draws you into its… | Little White Lies

San­tosh review – care­ful­ly draws you into its dis­mal intrigue

20 Mar 2025 / Released: 21 Mar 2025

A group of police officers in beige uniforms talking to each other on a street with trees and people in the background.
A group of police officers in beige uniforms talking to each other on a street with trees and people in the background.
4

Anticipation.

Loved Suri’s 2005 debut doc, I For India, so keen to reconnect after all this time.

3

Enjoyment.

A compelling and unique look at inequality in India, though too often overstates its thesis.

3

In Retrospect.

Excited to see what Suri does next, but something that embraces ambiguity more would be appreciated.

Sha­hana Goswa­mi stars as a wid­ow who inher­its her late husband’s police offi­cer posi­tion in Sand­hya Suri’s sharp fic­tion debut.

It’s been two decades since film­mak­er Sand­hya Suri launched her film­mak­ing career with the mov­ing 2005 cine-diary, I For India, about her inte­gra­tion into UK soci­ety as the daugh­ter of Indi­an immi­grants. San­tosh is her fic­tion fea­ture debut, and it’s a very dif­fer­ent beast for­mal­ly and tonal­ly, but still inter­est­ed in ques­tions of iden­ti­ty and the swag­ger­ing misog­y­ny of the patri­archy with­in Indi­an society.

Sha­hana Goswa­mi plays the terse, unsmil­ing wid­ow of the title who decides to take advan­tage of a bizarre gov­ern­ment loop­hole which allows her to assume her husband’s job as a local police inspec­tor as a way to retain her state-fund­ed accom­mo­da­tion. She accepts, not want­i­ng to return to live with the evil moth­er-in-law, but on day one is par­ty to the extreme cor­rup­tion and big­otry exer­cised by both male and female col­leagues. And in becom­ing embroiled in a mur­der case involv­ing a young girl, San­tosh also gets to expe­ri­ence the extreme inequal­i­ties of the caste sys­tem first hand.

It’s a slow, detailed pro­ce­dur­al, one which care­ful­ly draws you into its dis­mal intrigue – and it’s engross­ing for much of its run­time. It’s a shame that Suri has cho­sen not to run with some of the ambi­gu­i­ties she embraces in the first half, and goes to tire­some lengths to try and absolve San­tosh of any moral sin.

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