If you grew up in a colony in a village or small town, chances are there was that one household you were asked to stay away from. You aren’t allowed to play with the children over there. The reason is a woman – usually very beautiful – who is believed to be a femme fatale. It’s all fully based on hearsay, and we get colourful stories of the woman’s tantalizing ways, whereas the householder is blissfully unaware. In Suresh Triveni’s Netflix Original film Maa Behen, we get a woman of this kind. Attractive, coquettish, and the object of every man’s fantasy (and every woman’s disdain), Rekha (Madhuri Dixit) is a mom to two firebrand girls, Jaya (Triptii Dimri) and Sushma (Dharna Durga).
Together, they headline a wild and supremely entertaining feminist rib-tickler that would force you to exclaim, “Why is this not a series?”
Maa Behen opens with Jaya relentlessly cooking and cleaning in an all-male household. The woman’s indifferent husband flirts along with Sushma in viral Instagram reels. The setup is not exactly camp, even as the filmmaking tends to have a delightfully weird tone. In comes a distress phone call from Rekha summoning both girls home, right away. Little do they know their flirty yet largely unadventurous mother has committed what they refer to in Hindi as a “kaand”.
At home, Jaya and Sushma are stunned to find themselves in the middle of a bloody crime scene. In an era of thriller overkill, the premise might feel familiar to the viewer, but to these girls, it is a massive shock. What to do with their next-door neighbour’s dead body that lies smeared in blood on the floor? Do they bury it underneath a building, a la Drishyam? Or do they plot something like Monica, O My Darling? What follows is a wicked dark comedy with a string of absurd characters and even crazier events.
The writers (Suresh Triveni, Pooja Tolani) design the trio’s story as a gleeful assault on patriarchy, which Rekha does for real with her vile neighbour, Mr Gupta (Ravi Kishen in top form), who is the poster boy of misogyny. Jaya has a bone to pick with her loathsome husband, Manas (Shardul Bhardwaj), who treats a doormat with more respect than his wife. There’s Mrs Gupta (Geetanjali Kulkarni, what an actor) and the colony at large – all victims of relentless conditioning that there’s something not right with Rekha and her daughters. It all comes together to generate high-octane chaos around the mother’s character, the girls’ paternity, and an unidentified ransom call.
The glimmer of sanity in Maa Behen is Maheshwari (a very pleasant Arunoday Singh) – a local cop, Gupta’s relative, and Jaya’s school friend.
What makes Maa Behen particularly refreshing is that it refuses to package female empowerment as virtue. These women are impulsive, secretive, petty, reckless, and occasionally selfish. The film’s feminism comes not from making them role models but from allowing them the same messy humanity that men have enjoyed on screen for decades.
The unabashed feminist energy took me back to Pedro Almodovar’s 1988 classic, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. The actors – including the smaller players – are having a blast, and it shows. One of the many instances is a serious and liberating moment where Jaya shows Manas his place. Triptii Dimri simply knocks it out of the park here.
The satirical bits in Maa Behen are equally hilarious – whether it’s Sushma’s obsession to get a social media following or Rekha going all meta with a Madhuri Dixit homage. Note to filmmakers: this is how you use a legacy actress to her full potential, and not by inserting a stray dance number in a film that simply didn’t need one.
Triveni’s film is also one where the crew has a field day, etching out every detail and bringing this hybrid universe to life. DOP Anuj Rakesh Dhawan knows the canvas lacks expanse. The framing is consistently suspenseful, and the cleverly designed interiors and props (Ajay H. Chodankar and Vipin Kumar) do more than enough in creating an atmosphere. In a stunning flashback scene, a gang of goons vandalizes Rekha’s home, which is also a fine showcase of the crew’s collective abilities.
Maa Behen gives enough room for costumes (Veera Kapur Ee) to stand out, too, especially as Rekha steps out in her alluring wardrobe. While I didn’t mind the songs (Akashdeep Sengupta), it’s the original score (Subhajit Mukherjee) that brings a method to the madness.
In so many ways, the film can be counted as the actual comeback we wanted Madhuri Dixit to make. The real diva of the ’90s, Dixit has always had the offers, but nothing in the recent past has tapped into her abilities as effectively as Triveni’s film does. Not even Dedh Ishqiya, where she was still in her dressy, dancing, exotic self. The actor goes all out as Rekha, and there’s not an ounce of Dixit’s iconic screen self that we see in the film.
Much like Dixit, Triptii Dimri has always been a terrific actor who doesn’t seem to attract films that merit her skills. Maa Behen gifts her a rare opportunity to shapeshift, and there’s not a single contemporary of hers who could’ve made Jaya as flawless as Dimri interprets. Dharna Durga is an instant scene-stealer, and all those one-liners are safe with her. She is a welcome addition to Hindi cinema’s sparse list of female actors who would ace comedy all by themselves.
Looking at the trio, I was reminded how these aren’t people who learnt the language (Hindi) to join the movies. The beauty of landing the right words with the right pitch is a rarity on this date, where even outsiders come with a mandatory Juhu-Bandra enunciation.
Maa Behen may seem a bit mellowed as it ends. For sure, it’s engaging, but the finale does not hit home with a thud. The film spends so much time building inventive chaos that its resolution feels comparatively safe. You feel happy for the women, not exhilarated over the creativity here, and that’s okay. There’s also a brief late-stage stretch featuring a superb Paresh Rawal that feels like a narrative departure, threatening to derail the tone just as things peak. Yet, these aren’t exactly anomalies in a film that conveys so much – an empowering message, an original sense of humour, and a bunch of genuine thrills.
For that astonishing filmography of his, I won’t be surprised if every female actor worth her salt would queue up to work with Triveni. Look back at his women, and you’ll find that they are all flawed in some way, yet embraced with open hearts. Maa Behen gives us four more to cherish. Hema (yes!), Rekha, Jaya, and Sushma arrive with baggage, bruises, and bad decisions, but leave as some of the most endearing women Hindi cinema has produced in recent years.
VERDICT: ★★★★
Read the reviews of Maa Behen by the Film Critics Guild HERE.
