In the dead of night, a howling mother (Madhuri Dixit) phones her two daughters—the older one married (Triptii Dimri), the younger, an aspiring content creator (Dharna Durga)—demanding they rush home to help her with an emergency. The body of a man is lying in a pool of blood in the other room, and she doesn’t know what to do. It’s a familiar premise, adding to a growing subgenre of dispose-of-the-body-to-protect-your-family-at-all-costs thrillers (Jaane Jaan, Drishyam, Tabbar). But Suresh Triveni and writer Pooja Tolani give it a curious spin. Triveni, who’s had a busy year (Subedaar, Daldal), gives us yet another unexciting but undoubtedly interesting film that seems to have become his hallmark.Maa Behen is a fascinating, playful look at female rage and resistance that doesn’t quite rise to its potential and become greater than the sum of its parts. But those parts—its ideas and elements—remain enticing.A Deliciously Colourful WorldHailing from the fictional north Indian town of Naraazpur, three ‘crooked’ women from the same family have had to manipulate and seduce to get by and survive in a man’s world. Rekha (Madhuri Dixit) is a ‘femme fatale’ who is seen as the pariah of her colony. Local men spend their days abusing and catcalling her, and defacing her walls, whilst spending their nights fantasising about her. The rumour mill works extra hard, the legend being that she’s killed men and stolen their money. Madhuri Dixit in a still from 'Maa Behen'.When her second daughter, Sushma (an enjoyable Dharna Durga), was born to an unknown father, the women of the colony inspected the child to check that she didn’t resemble any of their husbands (one of many lovely little details like it). Rekha’s older daughter Jaya (an excellent, self-assured Triptii Dimri) has similarly always had to fend for herself. Married into a Mrs.-style patriarchal family, she has to toil away to serve the men of her household, particularly her manchild husband (the always terrific Shardul Bhardwaj).In short, these women are “trouble”. Outcasts who’ve always had to look out for themselves and suffer at the hands of the male gaze, male entitlement, and captivity.For Sushma, it’s online trolling; for Jaya, it’s domestic slavery; and for Rekha, it’s lecherous men who see her as a sex object. The three are even cheekily named after a certain washing powder ad. That is until they’re forced to work together to dispose of said body, and gradually learn to rely on each other and look beyond the barrage of bickering and festering old wounds. The body in question belongs to Shukla Ji (Ravi Kishan can do no wrong), Rekha’s moral-policing next-door neighbour who’s always looking for ways to oust her from the colony to maintain its sanskari values.'Dhadak 2' Isn't Just a Love Story—It's a Caste ReckoningSuresh Triveni and Pooja Tolani mount a delicious, darkly comic world of caricatures (think of this as the more kooky, colourful cousin of Haseen Dillruba).A delightfully extra Geetanjali Kulkarni perfectly understands the assignment as Shukla Ji’s wife in search of her missing husband, with the help of her police officer brother Maheshwari (a sincere Arunoday Singh), who’s always been besotted with Jaya. The craft is similarly playful, with DOP Anuj Dhawan clearly having a blast with how he frames the three women. Not to mention the colourful cutaways and central narration device of a Crime Patrol-style show called Khalbali that Rekha watches.The lovably dramatic anchor of that show steps out to start narrating the predicament the trio find themselves in. I also like that this is an “actor movie”, by which I mean that much of the narrative is just the three actors in a confined space playing off one another delightfully.Dharna Durga in a still from 'Maa Behen'.An Uneven ThrillerThe struggle with Maa Behen is the bigger picture.Triveni’s film is looking to root the packaging of a familiar tense thriller in an empathetic drama to comment on patriarchy and the relationship the three have with themselves, each other, and with a society that thinks little of them. The problem is that you don’t feel the tension, highs, or stakes of the thriller half.Sushma, Jaya, and Rekha are trapped in a house with a body in broad daylight. But after a point, the stakes start to feel lethargic and matter-of-fact. While, on paper, the scenario gets increasingly uneasy and the walls start closing in—Shukla Ji’s wife gets increasingly suspicious, a cop starts asking questions, Jaya’s husband turns up out of nowhere, an unknown new player blackmails the women, and so on—we rarely feel it.Maa Behen has a plot problem. After a point, rather than landing its big swings as the playful thriller rich with subtext, it risks descending into an indulgent “vibes” movie, which loses its way by focusing on the trio, their skeletons, backstories, and repetitive bickering rather than their predicament.Kiara Advani Row: Why Women Picking Own Partners Still Rattles Indian SocietyThe plot packaging isn’t enticing enough to keep us as engaged as you’d hope. It’s perhaps why I felt the duration more than I would have liked.There’s also a miscalibration in Madhuri Dixit’s performance that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s by no means an easy character. Rekha is constantly performing for those around her, and for herself, as the self-serving seductress quietly masking the storm underneath. But her navigation of Rekha’s nuances risks feeling uneven. Still, you can see the genius in casting a star forced to be the subject of the male gaze for decades. A scene-stealing Triptii Dimri is the best thing on offer here. One of the brightest talents of her generation, as we’ve seen in Dhadak and now this film, no one does rage quite like her.Madhuri Dixit in a still from 'Maa Behen'.Despite the uneven ride, with its memorable, stirring final act, Maa Behen remains a film you want to root for, and perhaps even revisit, for everything it wants to say and how it says it. A bumpy ride, but a memorable one that, like its central trio, is entirely unapologetic about its big swings and colourful personality.Maa Behen releases on Netlflix on 4 June.(Suchin Mehrotra is a critic and film journalist who covers Indian cinema for a range of publications. He's also the host of The Streaming Show podcast on his own YouTube channel. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)'I Married at The Peak of My Career. I Broke the 'Rule'': Madhuri Dixit