In Maatr, Raveena Tandon takes on the subject of rape with a brutal force. The film lays open some ugly truths about the way the judicial system fails a rape victim.

A raucous raga on the aftermath of rape, much of Maatr unfolds in a stern humourless no-nonsense manner of a fact-finding newshound who won’t go into digressions—because the film’s heroine knows what one wrong turn can do– just to keep the audience’s perception lightened. Which is for the best, really. In India, we can’t afford to laugh about rape the way the French could in the film Elle.

Maatr strips the act of rape of all its filmy glamour and titillating trappings to portray the agony of a woman, who watches her minor daughter gangraped, after she is raped herself. The two are then dumped on the side of the Highway by the seven wayward sons of influential dads, nocturnal animals who belong in hell. Provided the over-crowded address of Satan’s existence has space for these scummy creatures.

Director Ashtar Sayed doesn’t spare us the sordid details. We wince and shudder when the hospital staff must tell the grievously injured mother that her daughter was gangraped before being killed. You shudder for the mother when the cop tells her to forget about the heinous crime. Such scenes, shot in stark unglamourous colours by cinematographer Hari Vedantam, spares us none of the mother’s pain.

This film is a showcase for Raveena’s skills. Her character goes from grieving aggrieved suffering mother to an avenging diva with a quiet confidence that comes from her years of training in commercial cinema where anything can happen, and it does. To this sur of commercial escapism, a la vigilanteism, Raveena adds a pained strain of realism. She mines in her own maternal subconscious to express a mother’s pain.

Some of her sparring matches with the cop in-charge (Anurag Arora, efficiently powerful) find the actress express a wry disdain at the processes of the law which have let the mother down. When she takes matters in her own hands we know she has choice.

Tragically Raveena’s central performance is unaided by her co-actors. Talented actors like Divya Jagdale (playing Raveena’s best friend and confidante) and Rushad Rana (playing her husband) are annoying in their shadowy snapchat avatars. The climax with the worst computer-generated explosion seen in any films, also leaves us embarrassed and exhausted.

But Maatr means well. It tackles the issue of rape headlong and is not afraid to delve into the murkier aspects of the crime. Raveena and the film’s makers jump into the filth and are not afraid getting their feet muddy. A feeling of stifling foreboding and inescapable self-loathing runs through the brisk-paced film. Some sequences of violence, like the one where the least violent among the rapists is confronted and cornered by Vidya (why must a schoolteacher be named Vidya?) stay with us after the film. The director averts the danger of sprucing up the proceedings with sexy item songs and other digressions.

Says Raveena emotionally, “This is a topic I feel very strongly about. I’ve three daughters (two of them are adoptive) and I worry about their safety constantly. And why just daughters? Are sons safe any more? Is anyone safe any longer? We’ve politicians claiming women are responsible for provoking rapists. Can you imagine the depths of callousness that our politicians have plunged to? When a 30-year old woman was gangraped at a tennis club in Bengaluru, the Karnataka Home Minister wanted to know why she was playing tennis at 9.30 pm.”

Raveena feels the cases of rape are growing each year. “If we don’t take drastic steps, if we don’t instil the fear of God and justice into potential rapists I am afraid the rape statistics will multiply. But how can rapists be dissuaded when the most brutal of the Nirbhaya rapists Mohammad Afroz was declared a juvenile, treated with kid’s gloves in jail, given a sowing machine and rehabilitated as a tailor. He was eventually alleged to have links with a terror outfit. If this is what happens with brutal rapists, I can just see elders of primitive cultures telling their youngsters to go and sow their wild oats while they still fall under the juvenile laws’ act.”

Raveena met Nirbhaya’s mother in Delhi, the city where Maatr is set. “She told me something I’ll never forget. She said all the attention that her daughter’s rape and murder got lasted for four days. From the fifth day she was on her own fighting for justice on her daughter’s behalf. Her tears haven’t dried up as yet. They never will.”