SONI - An Alarmingly Silent Scream of Violence

Suhansid Srikanth

At one moment in Soni, we see a teen breaking down to her aunt Kalpana about the bullying she goes through in her school. She sounds so disturbed that she says at times, she feels like shooting everyone in her classroom. Kalpana, who hears this is left with an utmost shock and dismay making her requestion everything she have believed so far. The system she is living in.. The values she has learnt.. Everything!

Ivan Ayr's Soni is brilliantly carved in the way how violence intrudes in every frame of the scene no matter whether there is just a simple conversation or someone literally attacking someone else. There is domestic violence hinted by the abusive relationship Soni is trying to recover from. There is a professional ego play and hierarchy clashes in Kalpana's office. And then there are bunch of violent events happening around women.. abuses happening verbally, physically and sexually. The presence of this contemporary, dark, ugly tone of the country is constantly there throughout the film.

Be it a scene where a citizen who calls to the control room casually trying to get her mobile number the moment a girl speaks softly to him.. or a Navy officer, who caught drunk and drive trying to harass a woman in duty.. the film repeatedly captures this sense of aggressive assaults over women!

Through extended long shots by David Bolen and conversations spoken and cut as insanely real as possible.. the sense of alarming tension in the film becomes chokingly too much to handle. We, as audience, is kept to witness the one knock throughout the film! But there is no bang event! The film on the whole is about this collective violence the nation dumps on women.. the interpersonal lines we have buried in one way or other.

Soni and Kalpana come across as two extremes of the spectrum. We think Soni is behaving the way she is because of her personal issues. But Kalpana goes through an equally tormenting pressure with her family peepingly wanting her to have a child.. her husband who keeps thinking she is not 'man enough' to be a cop!

Geetika Vidya who plays Soni (who resembles a lot of Rooney Mara) gives a performance that's upclose personal and disturbing. As the story keeps diving inwards into her psyche.. we get the sense of anxiety and helplessness she is in despite her being the bold woman she tries to be. Saloni Batra, who plays Soni's head officer, Kalpana, on the other hand gives a much refrained performance. Her vulnerability in her private moments is brought out subtly by her conversations with her family.

Ivan Ayr's direction is a terrific breakthrough that has happened in quite some time. The other time I was this stuck by the warmest shades of violence peaking all over a film was in Titli. In that sense, Soni comes across as the first Indian Netflix standalone film that takes the standard miles above internationally yet remaining rooted about where it belongs!

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It is difficult to pick the genre of Ivan Ayr's directorial, Soni.. but what one can surely say is.. it, definitely is the best Indian Netflix outcome till date!