‘Santosh’ Writer-Director Sandhya Suri on the ‘Heat’ and ‘Straw Dogs’ Moments in Her Crime Drama Debut: ‘I Was Keen Not to Do Something Too Happy About Female Solidarity’

To many audiences across the globe, the plot of the Hindi-language drama “Santosh” — in which a widow takes over her husband’s job as a constable — sounds made up.

But for her debut narrative feature, which competed for the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes earlier this year before earning accolades at festivals like Camerimage, British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri drew directly from Indian law. Specifically, “compassionate grounds” allows the dependent of a government worker to be appointed to a job, including their own, after their death. As the eponymous fictional character (played by Shahana Goswami) investigates the murder of a young girl under the watch of a female superior officer (Sunita Rajwar) with inscrutable aims, what subsequently unfolds in the film is an extraordinary, unflinching portrait of one woman’s reckoning with personal relationships and a professional community in a larger sociopolitical culture historically controlled and dominated by men.

Ahead of the film’s Dec. 27 theatrical release in New York (before opening Jan. 10 in Los Angeles), Suri sat down in Los Angeles to speak about her inspirations — bureaucratic and otherwise — for “Santosh.” “The big thing for me was about making a crossover film,” Suri tells Variety. “I don’t mean crossover like commercial art; I mean it was made for India and for the West equally, from conception to every last subtitle and piece of dialogue.”

How did you first come up with the idea for “Santosh”?

I had this “appointment on compassionate grounds” [legal provision], which was the starting point for Santosh’s crazy journey. But I’ve always been looking to make a film about mentor and mentee, or guru and disciple — on even a spiritual level. I wanted to make it about two women, but I was keen not to do something too happy about female solidarity… to show that there is a deep feeling of that between [Santosh and Geeta], but then it’s going to have its shadow sides as well. And there was also this feeling of a chemistry between women that doesn’t necessarily need a label, a sort of homoerotic feeling that we can allow to be between men and men in art, but we don’t see it so much between women.

What collaboration did you have with Shahana and Sunita to define Santosh and Geeta?

In terms of process, it was an absolute must for me that they needed to agree to take the time out to spend with the police. I spent very many years trying to get that access, so when I finally got it, I wanted them to have seen what I had in my own research. So we’d spend the day together researching and hanging out, and then in the evening we’d go back and we’d work on the script. So we were just trying different things — I mean, Sunita generally has a more sort of loving, nurturing, optimistic worldview. So we had a bit of a push-pull on that, which I think gave just the right tone.

The film never pauses to explicitly comment about the patriarchal society in which Santosh and Geeta operate, but when you’re writing a story like this, to what extent are the norms of the culture that’s surrounding this sort of a fait accompli?

I don’t like didactic filmmaking … even coming from documentaries, my films were never really campaigning films. So even though the film is so dense, [about] misogyny, patriarchy, caste-ism, that’s more a tapestry of society. And for me, it was about looking at it like a “Straw Dogs” type of hairy urban shithole in the north of India where I could put her, where all of these things exist so casually that it’s not even “a thing” there. And so, it was an idea of keeping a light touch so that when you place her there, it can be more of an understanding about how violence is bred if you put someone in a situation like that.

How explicitly did you conceive those homoerotic undertones in terms of the action and the story?

Basically it was a lot to do with Geeta and her motivations. At the end of the film, she makes a sacrifice for Santosh, and given her character, it seemed a bit naïve or fantastical that she would do this just out of goodness of her mentorship. So it had to be something that I felt almost surprised at the strength of emotion and this action that she’s just done. So I felt that it must have come from a deep love for Santosh, at some level, however you choose to name it. And the strength of her feeling for her would come as a surprise. And also I felt that where Geeta is [in the hierarchy of the Indian police] must be so lonely that any need for intimacy — whatever that would be — she must be craving it so much.

How did you reconcile the differences between validating Santosh’s pursuit of justice for this murdered girl and a sense of, “Forget about it, Jake, it’s Chinatown…” at the end?

There weren’t that many drafts of the script, but the Sundance Lab is where I came with Version One, and I had some amazing mentors — [“JFK” writer] Zack Sklar and lots of people who were really big in procedurals. And then others who were talking about justice who were saying, “So why doesn’t she just go stab him,” or do something to get some closure? And for me, that was the one thing that I knew it was just not going to happen. For me, her tiny moment of, let’s say, validation of her worldview is after Geeta has this discussion with her in the diner — our “Heat” moment, right? And Geeta has this really weird psycho-feminist discourse which is absolutely insane, but also makes sense, disturbingly, the main conclusion of that being from Geeta’s point of view, well what’s the truth going to do? And then Santosh goes back to the house of the dead girl’s parents and she sees the mother and the daughter just peacefully asleep there, and she leaves. So there was some idea to maybe tell the truth, but then also a depressing maturity that maybe that isn’t the right thing to do in this circumstance.

This movie manages to be beautifully empathetic to both Santosh and Geeta’s perspectives. How difficult was it to understand each of their world views to tell the story with balance and nuance?

I mean, I think Geeta’s quite unknowable. For me, that diner scene was always a moment when she was going to express “why” and “what,” so that was something that got worked on until the very last moment of the cut to try and make it right. But even now, she remains quite unknowable to me. Because even now, I think, does she actually believe her own rhetoric? Is she actually deeply ambitious, or is there a big plan for women that she has in her mind? So I found that interesting, to write a character who seemed sketchy at the writing stage, who I thought I would solve on the shoot, who when I got to the edit, I still didn’t quite know, then finished the film and still feel… actually, maybe she doesn’t know quite herself. Maybe she is just unknowable in what she actually believes.

How much did the distance from this material, imposed by you not living in India, enable you to feel like you could be more honest in telling this story?

It makes you doubly conscious when you live outside. That’s why the film took 10 years to make, because I needed the access to be able to see with my own eyes, to do proper fieldwork before going to direct it. If I hadn’t been able to do that, I probably wouldn’t have made the film because I wouldn’t have felt confident in anchoring it in something. So I feel you need to be careful. I have the same sense of protection when I see India on screen, if I feel it’s not being handled properly. It doesn’t mean that I feel only Indians or brown people can make it, it’s just about certain sensibility and integrity and a lack of a cynical portrayal.

How emblematic is this film of the stories that you want to tell in the future?

I’m very “not strategic.” Otherwise, I think I’d be in a different place in my career. It’s just about finding the right piece of work, because it takes so long to get something made and takes such a commitment now. But I am actually working on something else which is set in the West, just by coincidence. It’s a dystopian love story based on a novella from J.G Ballard. So everything feels like something different to explore — [my next project] has got a man as a main character. So I’m drawn to something where there’s a great intimacy with the characters but you can really use the form in a way which is precise and rigorous.

There’s a school of thought that believes if storytellers are from — or telling stories about — a marginalized community, everything should be portrayed with exacting accuracy, meaning that performers from a certain region shouldn’t play characters from a different region, for example. Given your upbringing outside of India, to what extent have you felt that you have to consider that as you’re making films?

If a thought like that, I probably shouldn’t have made “Santosh.” Coming from docs where we’re always walking into other people’s worlds constantly, it’s all about research. I mean, J.G. Ballard probably is different because it’s dystopian. But it’s about research, respect, relationships formed and time spent in a community. I was nervous about this film coming out in India, because I live outside of India and it’s a film which is a strong critique. But the response has been so phenomenal about how authentic the film feels, that I’ve just felt very validated in that. So I just believe in researching well, and telling the story from the right place. Men can tell women’s stories, women can tell men’s stories. It’s free for all.

You said this was a 10-year process to completion. How much has completing this lit a fire to work with more frequency or more speed?

The next one won’t take as long. I think the thing was, your first feature is your first feature and it should count. What I loved was the naivete of writing something like this. On the short [“The Field”] I wrote — which I wrote after I wrote this and then made it between — everything was written at Magic Hour, because I had no experience. On set, I was like, “Oh my God, it looks great!” But it was pretty hellish to make. Then on this, there’s action scenes, there’s stunts, there’s 76 speaking parts … by the time I finished it, I realized that it was quite ambitious for my first feature.

And then, when I wrote this [in 2014], there was not a single story out, pretty much, about female police in India. There was one, “Mardaani.” But by the time I had actually gotten around to making it, there was a whole plethora of female cops everywhere. So part of me was like, “Don’t take that much time because now it’s all out there.” But then I’m like, OK, so what do I do now, because how many filmmakers does this happen to? Loads. Or, I can just really do what I can to make it as precise with as much detail as possible to set it apart. So that’s what I tried to do instead.