Soni is a film about two women police officers Soni and her Senior Kalpana from whose perspective we see the ground reality of being a women police officers and dealing with the problems that are there in the society and the system which works against them. Why I told you the basic plot beforehand is because to make one understand that it’s an important film on its own.
The feel of the film is like documentary but is the fictional account of the characters. The portrayal of Delhi and the police in general remains true to its nature. Soni is a young police officer who is good at her job but as the opening shots establishes tells the audience
that Soni is someone who takes the matter in her hands. I didn’t felt
that Soni had anger issues like her senior Police officer Kalpana says
in the establishing sequence. Soni deals with the things till the time
they are tolerable, but once they become intolerable for her she takes
the matter in her hands, literally! Thus, one of the incidents which
is an amazingly choreographed sequence where two army officers heavily drunk are stopped by the police on the road. And what follows is Soni’s reaction which lands up her in Control Room just to attend
calls (like a call-center).
Kalpana wants to help Soni, thus takes help from her husband who’s
also a police officer (very superficially explored character), but soon again Soni gets into a topsy-turvy situation which makes the system against her.
Soni’s character is straight out from the cop drama templates where
usually a male protagonist has personal issues and soon his
professional life also starts getting in trouble. Kalpana’s character arc builds throughout the film, and in end redeems itself.
There’s a scene where Kalpana asks Soni that why only she could see
such things happening which reminded me of Salman Khan’s ‘Jai Ho’ where Tabu asks the same question to Salman. ‘Jai ho’ had a over the top drama but, this film has a subtle drama and the scenes are
engaging like the opening sequence which rivets you from the very
first minute of the film.
The ending sequence where we see that Soni opens a book and reads
Amrita Pritam’s autobiography Revenue Ticket and as Kalpana elaborates in the film that a well-known writer once told Amrita Pritam that there’s nothing to write on her life and her autobiography can be written behind a revenue ticket. Thus, telling us that every woman has
her own story to tell, it can be that women that come to your house to
clean utensils or that women who picks up your call at the call centerto fix your Wifi connection. They have a story which can’t be written
behind a revenue ticket but requires deep understanding to see that
story. ‘Soni’ as a film tells a story of such people without any
exaggeration.
Indie Film Reviews by Parakram 