‘Maa Behen’ (2026) Netflix Movie Review - An Inventive Dramedy Searching for Its Characters

Suresh Triveni's Maa Behen is cut from the same cloth as Suresh Triveni's Subedaar. One might be an action drama, and the other a dark comedy thriller. Yet, both share an overreliance on style that masks a middling but well-intentioned substance. Well, in Maa Behen, though, the style to a large extent becomes the film's substance. It's about a mother, Rekha (Madhuri Dixit), and her daughters, Jaya (Triptii Dimri) and Sushma (Dharna Durga), who get entangled in a murder. What happened? Rekha frantically calls her daughters and says that her neighbor, Charitra Kumar Gupta (Ravi Kishan), is lying dead in her house. Did Rekha kill Charitra? Was it self-defense? Rekha does say that he tried to assault her. Is she lying? Is she telling the truth? Ask the neighbors, and you will find that they are in no mood to give Rekha nice compliments. They will eagerly hand her a negative character certificate stuffed with gossip and scandal, which Triveni amusingly, inventively, and cleverly displays through the gaze and framework of a juicy, exploitative Sansani-like crime show (it's called Khalbali in the film), where the host, Shrivardhan Trivedi, narrates the mother and daughters' stories as sensational dramas.

In these segments, Rekha, Jaya, and Sushma are depicted as conniving witches who unleash their sensuality to seduce and trap innocent men. Charitra is seen as a decent neighbor who dodges Rekha's sexual gazes. Jaya comes across as a backstabber who steals the man who came to marry her best friend. And Sushma is presented as an influencer so hungry for fame that she kisses a boyfriend for five minutes and uploads the video online, leading to the boy getting beaten and punished by his parents. For much of the film, the three women appear guilty and almost cartoonish, largely because Triveni filters them through the perspective of neighbors and gossipmongers. There are times when Maa Behen edges toward melodrama, but it quickly pulls itself back toward comedy and comic situations. That is, until Triveni gives the women the chance to express themselves authentically in their own voices, which is when Maa Behen fully embraces melodrama. It's here that the director provides space to the insiders' perspective—the perspective of the mother and her daughters.

It's a smart conceit, and it can be used as a defense if someone says they weren't on board with the tonal shift and the emergence of melodrama later. Just say that the movie transforms caricatures into human beings by granting their voices gravity and urgency. By taking the characters seriously, the movie takes their plight and their position in society seriously. Even minor scenes acquire new meaning in hindsight, like the moment when a mother pampers her drug-addled son while simultaneously scolding her daughter. During the film's comic stretches, the scene works as humor. Later, it demands to be reconsidered. Triveni, with his co-writer Pooja Tolani, adds relatable yet funny moments, like how a door that refuses to stay open bothers Sushma when she and Rekha move the body from one room to another (I have seen a door like this in almost every house I have visited). They also plant subtle setups that explode comically in meaning later, like a character's singing talent.

Is Dixit's casting, given that her character is described as someone who never ages, inspired? When Jaya mentions that she knows how much money it takes to buy Instagram followers, is this Dimri breaking the fourth wall and winking at the audience? More importantly, would the message of Maa Behen have landed just as comfortably had it remained a comedy from beginning to end? While the tonal change is explainable, that doesn't mean it works in the film's favor. The problem lies in the writers' failure to conceive rich characters. Avoiding spoilers, let's just say that something about the circumstances surrounding Jaya's marriage is revealed later. Didn't she talk to anyone about it all these years? Didn't she even mention it to her mother, who doesn't seem close-minded enough to force Jaya into something she doesn't really want? How educated are these women? Rekha is able to start a business, and Sushma is talented enough to run her social media account. How is it that none of them has any friends? Didn't Sushma go to college? Did she have a friend before the kissing scandal? Did they stop talking to her after this incident? If Jaya hadn't married, what would she have become? Did she have any goals, any profession she wanted to pursue?

Tolani and Triveni are so fixated on advocating women's emancipation that they don't provide space to other voices. They liberate their characters from society's strict confinement, only to relocate them to an existence that feels equally unimaginative. The women will possibly spend their days watching TV and eating non-veg dishes. The movie doesn't suggest bigger ambitions for them. It merely moves them from an oppressive environment to a mediocre one. (Even here, the movie cleverly plants a defense in the form of Rrama Sharma's character, but that's all she is. Her Goldie, too, is emptied out and has no life beyond that of a shallow function.) What's the point of such a cheap, purposeless independence? Triveni, in the end, repeats the same mistakes he made in Subedaar: he displays narrow-minded thinking, a tunnel vision that isn't able to rise above mere good intentions. Maa Behen might be stylistically interesting to watch, but it ultimately gives the impression of being unrealized, incomplete, and insufficient. It's an outline for a fantastic dramedy that's still searching for fully realized characters. Meanwhile, if you actually want to watch a wonderful comedy about a woman who navigates the strict rules of a backward society through cunning manipulation and also has a not-so-rosy relationship with her daughter, go for Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship. It accomplishes all of this without feeling the need to infantilize either itself or its audience. That's a film that earns both your affection and your admiration.

Final Score - [5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times