Accused: Two women in love face a dilemma

If my memory serves me right, the last film that I saw on lesbianism was the 1996 Fire, helmed by Deepa Mehta and performed by Nandita Das and Shabana Azmi. During my conversations with the director later, she said that Fire was not really a story about homosexuality. Rather, it underlined loneliness and longing. Be that as it may, I do not readily recall any movie since then that touched upon this subject: so, Anubhuti Kashyap’s English-Hindi drama, Accused, just out on Netflix, seemed novel in a way, enriched by superb performances. Konkana Sen Sharma (Metro in Dino, 2025) plays a senior gynaecological surgeon, Dr Geetika Sen, at Chapelstone General Hospital in London, while Pratibha Ranta (Laapata Ladies,2024) is Dr Meera Mishra, a child specialist at Willowbrook Hospital, also in the U.K. They are in a queer relationship.

When an anonymous complaint against Dr Sen is filed, accusing her of inappropriate behaviour during a physical examination, there is tension and heartbreak. Sen denies that she has wronged, while Dr Mishra is devastated that her partner indulged in a sexual escapade. Consumed by anger and jealousy, she is completely at a loss.

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The viewer is kept in suspense, kept in the dark about Sen’s complicity. Is she guilty or not, and the movie runs like a thriller with a private investigator, Mansoor (Sukant Deo), hired by Mishra, getting into the narrative.

Kashyap handles the theme with a lot of understanding and sensitivity, leaving the viewer in suspense, which does not quite resolve even at the end. We never know whether Sen is guilty, but we are sure that Mishra understands the situation and sees the picture in its totality.

More than the thriller element, the film is a wonderful character study of two women in a passionate relationship, which hits rock bottom midway.

The writer is a movie critic and author. Views are personal.