Anubhuti Kashyap’s latest Netflix production joins the list of Indian crime thrillers with intriguing one-word titles – and a one-dimensional story. Accused. The film tells the story of a celebrated gynecologist, Dr. Geetika (played by Konkana Sen Sharma), who finds herself in trouble she never imagined when the hospital where she works receives a series of anonymous emails accusing her of sexual misconduct.
A story that quickly becomes unsteady
Caught in a storm of lies and accusations, Geetika watches as her simple but fulfilling life begins to fall apart right before her eyes. Overnight, Geetika has a loving wife, a baby on the way, a big promotion that would skyrocket her career, and a big mansion in London – with no job, no wife, and no baby. Accused of sexual harassment, first in private emails and later on social media, her friends and family can no longer tell whether she is guilty or not. Geetika is on her own to clear her name as unresolved marital tensions, workplace rivalries and her past continue to complicate matters.
Geetika (Konakana Sen Sharma) and Meera (Pratibha Ranta) in Accused. Image source: Dharmatic Entertainment
Accused is Kashyap’s second directorial venture after Anubhuti Ayushmann Khurrana is directing the social comedy “Doctor G”. This time she moves her story to London with a bigger budget and more star power, and the tone of the film aptly matches the film’s darkness Attitude. Given the film’s interesting premise and the fact that Netflix is one of the main producers and Konkana Sen Sharma stars, there is little indication of how flat the narrative might fall.
As a seasoned artist, Sen Sharma is able to bring a certain gravitas to her character: a terse and ambitious surgeon in the world of a male-dominated industry.
As a seasoned artist, Sen Sharma is able to bring a certain gravitas to her character: a terse and ambitious surgeon in the world of a male-dominated industry. She represents her character’s sexuality with subtle shifts in body language and nuanced microexpressions, rather than making the entire character revolve solely around her sexual identity.
A one-dimensional script with caricaturized characters
But a single actor can only do so much to add nuance to a one-dimensional script. Since the focus of the narrative is a queer love story, there is hardly any chemistry between the main actors. Instead, there is a certain awkwardness between Geetika and her wife right from the start, which fails to convince the audience that their marriage is happy. The lack of chemistry between them also characterizes the choice of cast. One can clearly see that Sen Sharma is playing a similar role to the one he played in Geeli Pucchi, Neeraj Ghaywan’s short film for the Netflix anthology Strange dastaans (2021).
However, the arc that Sen Sharma’s character draws is conceptually interesting. He looks at the difference between abuse of power and sexual abuse and boldly explores whether they may have something in common when it comes to violating an individual’s boundaries. Even bolder, the film engages with discussions about the delicate relationship between power, sex and desire, with gender politics at the forefront.
Dr. Geetika has earned a reputation as a person who leaves no room for mistakes and is harsh and critical of her colleagues at the first sign that something has gone wrong. On the one hand, her strict attitude is easy to justify given the delicate nature of her job, where even a small mistake can result in someone losing their life. On the other hand, Geetika herself admits that the competitive nature of her field, coupled with her socially disadvantaged position as a queer woman, forces her to act harder than necessary.
Geetika (Konakana Sen Sharma) in Accused. Image source: Dharmatic Entertainment
While these are all smart questions to ask the audience, the film fails to flesh out the nuances it seeks to address. And the reason for this is obvious. A highly ambitious film that seeks to explore the consequences of blind ambition itself, Accused falls victim to the classic conundrum of quantity over quality.
By attempting to simultaneously address sexuality, gender dynamics, power plays, workplace tensions, and the politics of the #MeToo movement, the film fails to do justice to the myriad social issues it tackles, let alone treat them with intersectional sensitivity. In trying to do so much at once, Anubhuti Kashyap’s latest work ends up doing far too little, as each of its central ideas remains either underdeveloped or contradicts others.
Right from the start, Accused begins to fall apart, quickly giving way to melodrama and cheesy crime tropes like the quirky private detective who constantly smokes an invisible cigarette, or the man’s best friend who’s secretly in love with Meera, or Meera herself, portrayed as a wet-eyed wife who’s tired of being left behind at home.
Meera (Pratibha Ranta) in Accused. Image source: Dharmatic Entertainment
The film wastes a lot of its screen time simply fleshing out these tropes we’ve all seen too many times, and instead misses the opportunity to actually explore what it was going for: the disintegration of Geetika’s home life. The emphasis on the ensemble of characters also does the film a disservice and prevents it from achieving what it set out to achieve.
Weak performances don’t help the film either. The only convincing performances come from Konkana Sen Sharma, who ends up doing much of the heavy lifting, and actress and musician Sanjeeta Bhattacharya, who appears in a brief cameo role.
Weak performances don’t help the film either. The only convincing performances come from Konkana Sen Sharma, who ends up doing much of the heavy lifting, and actress and musician Sanjeeta Bhattacharya, who appears in a brief cameo role. But that’s not nearly enough for a film that relies so heavily on its characters for its narrative.
Burning too brightly: The defendant fails his own test of ambition
The crux of the problem lies in the film’s treatment of Dr. Geetika’s character story. First, “Accesed” is based on a motif we’ve seen many times: the fierce, difficult woman who has built a tough exterior to survive in a patriarchal world. But the film tries to be clever by turning things on its head and using Geetika’s toughness to make a broader commentary on the “angry feminism” that is so often dismissed today. It asks a provocative question: Is this kind of anger a real means of empowerment or is it just a reactionary defense mechanism?
By examining whether Geetika’s professional coldness and her alleged misconduct have the same roots in a desire for control, the film touches on the intersection of sex, power and ambition. It’s a bold move to suggest that the same survival instincts that brought Geetika success could also lead to her downfall, but the script doesn’t have the patience to revive these ideas.
Geetika (Konakana Sen Sharma) in Accused. Image source: Dharmatic Entertainment
The intersectional sensitivity that the film strives for is ultimately sacrificed at the altar of narrative density. While simultaneously attempting to make a clear statement on the #MeToo movement, queer domesticity, and the murderous nature of medical policy, Accused fails to muster the emotional punch necessary to support its thesis. What remains is a series of intellectual vignettes that don’t quite add up to a moving portrait of a woman under siege. The lack of dimension in the relationship between Geetika and her wife Meera is perhaps the worst casualty; Without a tangible sense of what is lost, the tragedy of its resolution remains purely academic.
Accused is a reminder that without rigorous, focused storytelling, representation is just another form of typecasting.
Ultimately, Accused is a testament to Konkona Sen Sharma’s ability to elevate even the most fragmented scripts. Her performance is a masterclass in restraint, navigating the film’s melodramatic tendencies with steady, surgeon-like precision. But as the credits roll across the gray London skyline, one gets the feeling that the film, much like its protagonist, is caught in a wildfire of its own making: bright, ambitious, but ultimately burnt out before it can illuminate the very nuances it set out to explore. For a platform like Netflix that continues to recycle successful archetypes, Accused serves as a reminder that representation without rigorous, focused storytelling is just another form of typecasting.
Ananya is an author and researcher on all things literature. With a particular focus on film, gender and sexuality, she’s great at curating the perfect movie night, but when it comes to life itself, she still needs to flesh out the script.