Accused dives straight in. It has no time to fiddle. We are parachuted into the lifetime of Dr. Geetika Sen (Konkona Sen Sharma), a senior surgeon at a London hospital: good, assured, married, getting ready to a significant promotion and a transfer to Chester. She’s a taskmaster, however so good at her job that her social identification — a queer South Asian immigrant — is a footnote. Until it isn’t. HR receives an nameless e-mail by a affected person accusing Geetika of predatory habits and sexual harassment. Just like that, this life begins to unravel. Seeds of uncertainty are planted within the head of her spouse, Meera (Pratibha Ranta), a physician at a youngsters’s hospital herself. Social media places her on trial. Her colleagues have a look at her otherwise. An investigation begins. The movie factors in each instructions, after all. Geetika’s persona is scrutinized in a manner that invitations the typical viewer to interpret complexity as culpability. It says one thing that, whilst an alleged perpetrator, she will get the sufferer beatdown: her previous is dug up, errors are weaponised, judgment errors are revealed, proof of ethical ambiguity is proven, credibility is doubted. In quick, she is seen as responsible till confirmed harmless.
I see the one-line hook of Accused: what if it’s a feminine who abuses energy? But it’s such an odd movie — a misguided gimmick to subvert a style that’s basically skewed to start with. For starters, it appears to not understand how reckless it’s to stage a post-MeToo story during which, no matter gender, the accusers are murkier than the accused. To point out a motion that empowered survivors to come back ahead in context of a story that’s designed to discredit these voices is tone-deaf at greatest. Aspersions are solid on a number of gamers: the spouse’s nice-guy buddy, a white colleague, a rival for the dean’s submit, a youthful ex-flame, an ex-partner, a disgruntled former worker. It’s like watching a whodunit the place everyone seems to be a ‘suspect’ in a case of character assassination somewhat than a personality’s assassination. It revels within the pressure of who accused her; by the point the movie reckons with the why and what, it is a bit too late. Each of them has a motive to dislike her. She is, in any case, an disagreeable girl-boss {that a} patriarchal (and racially charged) society is wired to distrust.
There’s additionally the irony of the characterisation. Geetika’s gray popularity stems from the truth that she inadvertently finally ends up resembling the very males she has needed to battle alongside the best way. In her quest to make it in a male-dominated subject, she has subconsciously constructed herself as much as be like one: hostile in direction of ‘weak’ girls, unaccountable, curt, illiberal, boastful. It’s a perceptive statement, one we see throughout media and company landscapes, however the movie itself treats her like a male protagonist. All her flaws are vindicated at each flip; she is seldom flawed, even when she is; not as soon as does her youthful accomplice query her; her ambition is seen as a insanity. She is a girl of contradictions, but the script in some way flattens her right into a gender-reversal placeholder. To its credit score, it offers her the instinct to recognise her personal complicity within the system. But the Netflixification of the premise implies that it’s achieved in a simplistic, preachy method. Every ounce of subtext is spelt out in a manner that reduces Geetika to an idea. Even the title first alludes to “abuse” earlier than it corrects itself to “accused”. I get that the thought is to incriminate everybody — together with the typical viewer — for deeply entrenched biases, however the writing doesn’t want smoke-and-dagger twists and unimaginative exchanges to make its level.
The therapy is at odds with the multilayered theme. The humanity within the story isn’t allowed to breathe by the algorithm. In most scenes, you’ll be able to inform the distinction between what the movie is and what it needs to be. The pressing background rating retains making an attempt to promote thriller and rhythm in a social thriller. The movie opens with a shadowy shot of a hoodie-wearing individual typing an nameless e-mail in a library. The sanitised age-gap and same-sex marriage on the centre goes by a disaster of belief, nevertheless it typically seems like an excuse to introduce an eccentric character or two. There’s a classy slow-mo stroll after a vital revelation; there’s a musical sad-montage (solely instrumental, fortunately) to convey isolation and battle. There’s a chase at evening that nearly threatens to grow to be a clunky screwball journey. Geetika’s arc unfolds prefer it’s a part of a franchise that may put her in several temperatures of sizzling water each sequel. At factors, it isn’t clear if it is a relationship drama with a facet of sexual harassment allegations or a office drama with a facet of marital battle. And then there are the weird dubbing and dialogue-delivery points. All the British and overseas characters sound like they’ve been voiced by Indians with wonky accents; the Indians communicate in a classroom-coded manner tailor-made to fashionable OTT viewers who can ‘hear’ the plot if the visuals drive them away. It’s a deal-breaker for a topic so loaded. Actually, it’s a deal-breaker for any type of film.
Somewhere in Accused, there’s an fascinating movie that’s reluctant to come back ahead and be heard. And this has nothing to do with the gloomy English climate — which is extra of Hindi cinema’s reverse-exoticisation aesthetic than a real ambiance that provides the psychology of such plots. It’s a disappointing watch, not least as a result of it takes some doing to fumble an unorthodox story starring an emotionally clever actor like Konkona Sen Sharma. But she’s shaky inside the constraints of a tell-don’t-show system. Accused appears content material (pun meant) to solely introduce a thorny matter; it appears happy sufficient with a daring synopsis. The curiosity to chop past is continually undone by the duty to be watchable, accessible and performative.
There are worthy speaking factors: like how infidelity and abuse is measured in opposition to the identical yardstick, how girls in cost are held to a distinct ethical commonplace than their normalised male counterparts, how the regulation isn’t geared up to cope with the authenticity of allegations, how age-gap companionship is formed by a lopsided energy dynamic, and even how ‘freedom’ in a first-world democracy just isn’t with out hidden phrases and laws. But the speaking factors stay bullet-points. It’s not a simple process: to streamline all these dimensions and hit that candy spot between (cultural) sensitivity and (creative) sensibility. A movie extra alive to social media discourse and true-crime virality is simply not it. Scrolling by trauma is self-defeating in an age the place unverified accusations trump inherited truths.
