Accused
Accused has an engaging premise with themes of race, gender and sexuality. It's brought low by artless and overt direction. 5.2/10
Did you want the movie Tár to end with Cate Blanchett giving a speech about the failures of her own character and a realization about how power is always a corrupting force? If so, Accused is the movie for you!
Geetika is a successful and ambitious doctor living in London with her wife, Meera. Geetika keeps her personal and professional lives deeply separate. Usually. Anonymous complaints accusing her of sexual misconduct shatter her well-curated, respectable image. Geetika sees little justification to the complaints. After a strange break in, she believes someone is trying to smear her. Problem is, Geetika is keeping secrets from Meera. She also involves herself deeper in the case in a way that doesn’t make her come off as innocent. Even as Geetika works to clear her name in the workplace, her home life continues to fall apart. With so many concealed secrets, Meera doesn’t know if she can trust Geetika.
The premise and themes of Accused are really solid. I was surprised how much this story about the collapse of a woman’s professional life engaged me. Accused brings in issues of gender, race and sexuality. After accusations are leveled at Geetika, the online response is exceedingly racist and sexist. The film does pretty well in establishing a workplace thriller with deeper themes and an imperfect protagonist. Nobody should receive the racist vitriol Geetika does as response to the accusations. But are the accusations themselves completely spurious? It’s hard to say, when Geetika often makes such poor choices that read as the choices of someone guilty.
While the framework is good, the directing of Accused lets it down. For starters, it seems that director Anubhuti Kashyap doesn’t fluently speak English. This translates into awkward sounding English dialogue and below-standard English performances, even from cast members who are English. Additionally, the film is unremarkable to look at. Accused was thrilling in spite of its directing and visuals, not because of it. The film feels very TV movie or TV episode, even. This is okay to begin with. But as Accused stretches to feature length, I became bored with how flat everything onscreen came across.
I am predisposed to blame Netflix for my main critique, though my blame may be mislaid. There’s no subtly to Accused. Plot points and opinions are often repeated multiple times, seemingly for clarity. Any ambiguity is replaced by dialogue that pulls themes and uncertainties into overt and blatant statements. Tár was a success partially because of the uncomfortable ambiguity surrounding the main character’s actions. Accused seems uncomfortable with similar ambiguities. It instead has a third act where everything is resolved neatly. Geetika gives a big speech about what she’s learned and what she regrets. The film’s conclusion feels more like the reader questions at the back of a school book to make a reluctant child “engage” with the story.
The script of Accused has some really good stuff in it. But the finished product is brought pretty low through heavy-handed yet artless direction. Also, as a lesbian movie, Accused is pretty chaste. These women have a life together. But as far as affection goes, we max out at a hug. Accused wants to deal in uncomfortable topics. But the movie itself seems uncomfortable with those exact topics as well as ambiguity or controversy. Playing it as safe as it does really lets down the bones of a really engaging story.
Overall rating: 5.2/10
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