A woman’s most fundamental and most complicated relationship is with her mother. Jeejivisha Kale’s Tighee explores this universal truth with maturity, honesty and tenderness.
The exquisitely made Marathi film is out with English subtitles in cinemas. Tighee (Three Women) looks at the fraught bond between Hemalata (Bharati Achrekar) and her daughters Swati (Nehha Pendse) and Sarika (Sonalee Kulkarni). Swati lives with her husband Malhar (Pushkaraj Chirputkar) in Mumbai, away from Hemalata and Sarika in Pune.
One of Sarika’s gripes is that she has put her life on hold to take care of her mother. Sarika has other complaints about Swati, which erupt when Hemalata falls seriously ill.
If Sarika feels that she is wasting away, Swati is miserable too. Swati has a predatory boss (Jaimini Pathak) who is adept at exploiting her insecurities and vulnerabilities. The often-invisible effects of sexual abuse, and the crippling fear it produces, are among the themes in Nikhil Mahajan’s excellent screenplay, with dialogue by Prajakt Deshmukh.
It’s remarkable how much ground Tighee covers in just a hundred minutes. Jeejivisha Kale, making an assured directing debut, teases out the layers in Mahajan’s screenplay not just through the performances, but also through the staging.
Unlike many other films on the subject of dysfunctional families that resemble plays or television serials, Tighee relies on cinematic tools to make its points. Milind Jog’s framing is elegant, his palette suitably muted for a tale of unhealed wounds and lingering hurt. The editing by Nikhil Mahajan and Hrishikesh Petwe is always respectful to the narrative’s unhurried rhythms.
There’s a beautiful composition of Sarika slumped in a corner of her house, both stunned and elated by news she has received about her career. The bursting of fireworks is a source of irritation as well as revelation.
An elephant in the room – a shocking secret – has driven a wedge between Hemalata and Swati. This sensitively handled passage boosts Tighee’s credibility as one of the acutely observed films about childhood trauma and its echoes into adulthood.
Even without this secret, which provides a context for both Swati and Hemalata, Tighee is powerful in its own right. The examination of the complexities of womanhood survives the outing and its mildly unconvincing immediate outcome.
The performances by the three actresses undergird the emotionally resonant story. Acting veteran Bharati Achrekar brings out Hemalata’s pig-headedness and her refusal to explain her actions.
Nehha Pendse is heart-rending in the scenes in which Swati tries to deal with her boss’s abusive behaviour. Sonalee Kulkarni is superb as the embittered Sarika.
The rest of the cast is in fine shape too – Jaimini Pathak as the creepy boss from hell, Pushkaraj Chirputkar as Swati’s shambolic spouse, Nipun Dharmadhikari as Sarika’s empathetic business partner. Tighee maintains its hold all the way until the final scene, a superbly judged moment of reckoning.
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