2.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Accused on Netflix

Netflix’s latest Indian Original movie features a lesbian couple in crisis, and its LGBTQ theme makes Accused stand out among other Indian Originals. Unfortunately, a formulaic story treatment makes the film more novel than innovative.

Comparisons between Accused and Todd Field’s 2022 movie Tár are inevitable. Both focus on a queer woman in a position of power whose career and marriage are threatened by sexual harassment allegations. Accused shifts things by making the allegations more of a mystery than a sure thing and by devoting more time to the main character’s wife’s experience.

Dr. Geetika Sen (Konkona Sen Sharma), an ace surgeon and gynecologist at London’s Chapelstone General Hospital, is known as much for her her gruff manner as for her medical talents. She’s about to leave for a big promotion at another hospital in England. On top of that, she and her wife Meera (Pratibha Ranta) are adopting a baby.

While the couple seems happy together, there are a few signs of trouble early in the story. Geetika is routinely late to events, giving the excuse that she was in surgery and out of reach — and sometimes that’s true. Their move away puts Meera’s own pediatrics career on hold, which is important, given that there’s an age gap of at least 10 years between the couple (Sen Sharma is 21 years older than Ranta in real life). Geetika feels like her more established career takes precedence, even if it prevents Meera from making similar progress in hers.

Then there’s the fact that Meera’s family back in Meerut don’t even know she’s in love with a woman, let alone married to one. An attempt to introduce Geetika to Meera’s brother while he’s in town is scuttled when Geetika fails to show up for lunch.

In the midst of everything, Chapelstone Hospital receives an anonymous complaint from a patient alleging inappropriate sexual conduct by Geetika during an exam. Geetika insists she didn’t do anything wrong, but the hospital’s head of Human Resources, Simran (Monica Mahendru), is obligated to investigate, despite their friendship.

Rumors circulate, and soon there are more anonymous complaints, including one on a social media site. Racists and homophobes are happy to pile on the insults until the hospital can’t ignore it. Geetika is put on leave. Things only get worse from there.

The social media segment is one of the worst examples of Accused falling into contemporary Hindi filmmaking tropes. Images of social media comments float on the screen around Geetika, including one that reads, “Someone tag Netflix, the pilot episode just dropped.” The visual gimmick is tired enough even without the tacky self-referentialism.

Geetika becomes convinced that someone is framing her, and her paranoia only ramps up her tendencies toward secrecy. But that prompts Meera to wonder what else her wife is hiding. Add to that all the people who are happy to see Geetika brought down a peg — aggrieved colleagues, Meera’s infatuated co-worker Angad (Aditya Nanda) — and the doubt becomes more than the relationship can bear.

The lead actors do a really wonderful job. Sen Sharma is the ideal choice to play a character who can wither with a look while still being sympathetic. Ranta plays off her in a way that highlights the power imbalance and Meera’s growing discomfort with it.

Yet the film is so straightforward and surface level that it feels less substantial than it could have. Issues around queer identity in Indian culture are mentioned but not examined. Much of the dialogue around sexual harassment is taken from workplace conduct handbooks and feels divorced from lived experience. These big issues are convenient plot setups, but that’s it.

Accused even wraps with characters monologuing about the lessons they learned throughout — as if we, the audience, didn’t just watch them learning those lessons. It would’ve been nice if director Anubhuti Kashyap and writers Sima Agarwal & Yash Keshwani had more faith that an audience that would seek out such a story could handle a more robust examination of the issues it presents.

Links

• Accused at IMDb
• Tár at Wikipedia