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...

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