Gargi

A Tamil film set in Chennai. Gargi teaches at a primary school. She lives with her father, who works as a security guard at an apartment block, and her younger sister. A nine year old girl in that block is assaulted. Five men are arrested and her father is one of them. From there the film is a legal story told entirely from outside the court's logic. The family has no money, no lawyer will take it, and a junior who has never argued a case agrees. The neighbourhood turns. She loses the job, the sister loses a marriage prospect, and a television channel parks outside the house. Gargi is certain. She organises the defence herself, finds the inconsistencies, and pushes the lawyer through a case he is not ready for. What the narrative is interested in is not the verdict but certainty: the film spends two hours building a daughter's faith in her father and then asks what that faith was made of. The last twenty minutes reframe everything before them. This is the reason the film is discussed, and it is done with the evidence already on screen rather than with a withheld fact. The tone is restrained. There is no fight, no song sequence in the usual place, and the courtroom scenes are quiet. Sai Pallavi plays Gargi and carries almost every scene. Kaali Venkat plays the lawyer and Aishwarya Lekshmi appears in support. Gautham Ramachandran directed. Who it is for: anyone who wants a serious Indian film about a subject its cinema usually avoids. Who it is not for: anyone the subject would distress; the film handles it carefully but does not soften what happened.