BOTTOM LINE
Domestic Drama With Enough Bite
PLATFORM
Amazon Prime Video
RUNTIME
2 Hours 11 Mins
What Is the Show About?
Babita is trying to climb the ladder in the police force, taking up a job she earns following her cop-father’s death. She is married to Sharad, who prods her to take a leave from work to return to their native village. Upon their arrival, she bumps into a childhood friend, Bansi, who’s found dead the next day. While investigating his death, the domestic tensions nearly consume her.
Performances
Nimisha Sajayan stands tall in a superb, intense performance in a tailor-made role, navigating her dual identities as a cop with low self-esteem and an ill-treated wife to a conservative man. Though she’s increasingly being stereotyped in gendered parts that take on misogyny, it is compensated for by how craftily the story is woven.
Barun Sobti’s choice of roles in his OTT outings continues to impress. Despite limited screen time, he makes an impact. Anshuman Pushkar and Sunita Rajwar provide ample support in driving the film’s core theme. Ravi Jhankal, Kuldeep Sareen, and Rajesh Kumar leave their mark too.
Analysis
If one had to sell Babita Singh Reporting through an elevator pitch, it would’ve been: ‘What if Nimisha Sajayan from The Great Indian Kitchen is a suspended cop who investigates the murder of a childhood friend as she reaches her hometown?’ Babita, a.k.a. Baby, who earns her job on compassionate grounds, is treated as a pushover at work. The marriage forces her to be an ‘angel in the house.’
The husband is no green flag. While Babita and Sharad have a love marriage, he keeps hinting that she should quit her job and blames her for not taking a single leave for two years to visit his mother. He is a mom’s pet, a people pleaser, and gaslights her into blaming herself whenever there’s an argument. He also joins in when casual remarks are cracked around her weight and thyroid issues.
Babita Singh Reporting is a story of a married woman finding herself again through work. The case of a childhood friend, Bansi, being murdered in their hometown isn’t hers. In what little she’s seen of life, he’s probably been the only man who stood up for her. They were supposed to meet the same evening she lands in the village. Hence, the entire film becomes a scenario of ‘what if I’d met him that day?’
Baby needs to find answers – escaping the claustrophobically domestic identity that her husband and mother-in-law confine her to. The mythical motifs around Bansi’s life – as a local actor known for playing Ravan, the literal references to his ‘mask’, the ‘fire’ that perishes him year after year during Dusshera, and the dohas of a shopkeeper – enhance the psychological tension in the investigation.
The film, more than the investigation of Bansi’s death, becomes Baby’s quest to find his story. He had no friends in the village, wasn’t on talking terms with a brother in a house torn by a property dispute, and his only solace was the stage. Why would someone kill him? The screenplay is a delicious dance between Baby’s domestic dynamics and professional instincts.
Through the narrative, Baby realises the need to stand up for herself, taking a crash course in ‘how not to be taken for granted.’ At work, she shoots reels for a superior officer, much to a female colleague’s disapproval. Back home, whenever she pitches in for help and is pushed to her limits, any alternative conversation is viewed as a protest. By the end, she’s tired of the act.
In a nutshell, the film is a character study of a police officer standing up for a victim while being entrapped in a conservative household herself. It uses apparently mundane acts – body shaming, domestic chores, male humour, loveless sex, and frequent gaslighting – to portray how a bubble eventually bursts. There’s no doubt that it works better as a domestic saga than as an investigative drama.
There are many layers to the issues Baby experiences at home, and the conflicts are familiar – theirs being a love marriage, the relatively ‘gentle’ red flag of a husband, the work-life balance. The case, however, feels deceptively simple. It tends to lose itself in abstract details and isn’t substantial enough to dabble with (beyond a point). It wants to explore Bansi’s psyche, but you don’t quite empathise with his emptiness.
The main temptation for a film about a woman breaking the glass ceiling and rediscovering herself is to make the story all about herself. The investigation would’ve been slightly more interesting if she had an ally in the village. All the time, Babita feels alone, despite the people around her. Several characters and the hierarchies within the village are slightly generalised and uni-dimensional.
What still keeps you invested in Babita Singh Reporting is the surefootedness in the storytelling and its psychological tension, where a sharp central performance is equally matched by technical finesse. You come for a typical woman-led cop story and the genre tropes, but end up appreciating its sensitivity in how it unravels the domestic tensions in a woman’s life.
Music and Other Departments?
The score by Ajay Jayanthi is particularly effective in embedding village realities and traditions without diluting the undercurrent of tension in the film. What lends depth to the mystery is its visuals. Sunil Borkar brings an interpretative quality to seemingly ordinary sequences through his innovative use of props, light, and set design. The film has a slick start, experiences a few uneven or repetitive stretches later, but ultimately regains its mojo. Tanya Chhabria ensures a relatively tight narrative with not many loose ends.
Highlights?
Nimisha’s performance
Domestic drama
Storytelling sensibilities, technical finesse
Drawbacks?
Middling investigation portions
No real surprise element
Few convenient writing choices
Did I Enjoy It?
Yes, it may not be perfect but there’s enough bite in the narrative to make up for the absence of thrills/surprises.
Will You Recommend It?
Go for it if cop dramas within a rural setting and psychological elements interest you.
Babita Singh Reporting Prime Video Movie Reviewed by M9 News
