Babita Singh Reporting movie review: Babita aka Baby is your average Indian woman, trying to navigate politics at the work-place as well as in her domestic sphere. It could be the story played out in millions of households, but the thing that makes this film different is that Babita is a cop, elevated by circumstances into her position.

The fact that hers is a ‘compassionate posting’ keeps coming up: a death in Baby’s family empties up a spot at the police station, which she steps into, with her colleagues expecting her to earn her place over and over again. The fact that it parallels her home situation, as a wife and daughter-in-law, is not hidden either: dutiful bahus are expected to fill empty spots day after day, to keep the family happy.

This duality is captured deftly in Ambiecka Pandit’s atmospheric film which threads societal ills through a police procedural, a well-established genre flourishing in the age of streaming. Arriving in small-town Rewa with husband Sharad (Anshumaan Pushkar) for her sister-in-law’s (Priya Yadav) godh-bharaai, Baby’s focus is split between her domestic duties and the sordid murder of childhood friend Bansi (Barun Sobti).

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It is when the director and writer Amita Vyas train their sights on the spikiness that happens within the chaar-diwari — mother-in-law (Sunita Rajwar) ruling the roost, sister-in-law behaving like the entitled nanad, and husband doing the passive-aggressive act — that the film works best. Not this sari, that one; haldi doodh at the crack of dawn — all the petulance is saved for the daughter-in-law, who realises that she is being put upon but keeps soldering on regardless.

The ensemble cast is solid, led by a wonderful Nimisha Sajayan, as she does about trying to keep everyone happy, pausing to check in on herself only when she can. But the performances can’t paper over the weaknesses of the film. The victim is thinly-written. We never really get a satisfactory sense of who he is. Why does Baby get so involved? Was there something between the two? Why would a woman who is clearly not confident of her own abilities go barrelling into tricky situations which are clearly above her pay-grade? This is where Baby, and the film stumbles: her attempts at understanding the weight of patriarchy and her tentative pushing back has more impact, than the unravelling of the mystery.

You may get reminded of Sandhya Suri’s ‘Santosh’ in the way an ‘anukampa’ posting is used to prop up a woman who learns to learn on the job, as well as Rajwar’s presence. But the small town woman, and the small town cop, sometimes one playing the other, are in the danger of becoming tropes, if they haven’t already: Sudip Sharma (Pataal Lok, Kohrra ) is co-producer here, and well-versed in creating atmospheric, grounded crime thrillers.

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Having liked Pandit’s short ‘Under The Waters’ very much, I was waiting to see what she did with her debut feature. It lags, but there is also no doubt that there is a voice here.

Babita Singh Reporting cast: Nimisha Sajayan, Anshumaan Pushkar, Sunita Rajwar, Priyanka Setia, Priya Yadav, Barun Sobti, Ravi Jhankal, Geetika Vidya Ohlyan, Rajesh Kumar


Babita Singh Reporting director: Ambiecka Pandit


Babita Singh Reporting rating: 2.5 stars