Jalsa

Suresh Triveni's 2022 Hindi film opens with a crash at night and a car driving away. An eighteen-year-old girl is left on the road. Vidya Balan plays a well-known journalist and Shefali Shah the cook who has worked in her home for years. The relationship between them begins to come apart along the class distance the accident exposes. The film's interest is not in who did it; that is given to the viewer early. The real question is how long someone who knows the truth can hold it, and what a person whose profession is telling the truth does when it concerns her own life. The scenes between Balan and Shah are the strongest part. Neither raises her voice, and the tension comes entirely from what goes unsaid. The final section stays hesitant about resolution, which leaves some viewers unsatisfied. Who it's for: viewers who like class difference told through a moral dilemma. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a clear outcome of justice; the film leaves the account open.