‘Mrs.’ Movie Review: Sanya Malhotra Carries This Softer, Prettier Rage Against The Patriarchy

Director: Arati Kadav 
Writers: Harman Baweja, Anu Singh Choudhary, Neha Dubey 
Cast: Sanya Malhotra, Kanwaljit Singh, Nishant Dahiya 
Language: Hindi 

A leaky pipe persistently drips in the kitchen. In Mrs. it becomes an apt metaphor for the film’s central theme. The problem isn’t the leak itself, but the entire corroded system that needs replacing. 

A dirty dining table becomes a symbol of insidious male entitlement — one that is less overtly cruel but just as stifling. Arati Kadav’s remake of The Great Indian Kitchen reshapes Jeo Baby’s scathing critique of domestic labour and patriarchal oppression for a wider, more mainstream audience; in doing so, it both gains and loses something vital.

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Sanya Malhotra is mesmerising as Richa and brings her signature doe-eyed optimism to the role, making it all the more heartbreaking when that light dims. Her descent is a slow erosion of self — death by a thousand cuts.

A still from 'Mrs.'

A key shift in Mrs. is its urban setting and the deceptive veneer of progressiveness. Diwakar (Nishant Dahiya), Richa’s husband, is a gynaecologist — a doctor of female anatomy. His profession tricks the audience, much like it tricks Richa, into assuming he understands women. But his knowledge is mechanical, detached, entirely self-serving. His clinical expertise does not extend to empathy or understanding. Worse, he does not care to change. He sees Richa’s body as something to be managed, not as a source of agency or desire. When she initiates a conversation about intimacy, his disinterest is not rooted in ignorance, but in complete apathy. Later, when she asks him to bring her a sanitary pad, he responds, “I’ll send it with a nurse.” It’s not a hard no, but a dismissal all the same — a refusal to engage with anything he considers ‘women’s business’. 

Director Kadav subtly explores this terrifying rise of covert misogyny — men who, on paper, are ‘good men’. These are doctors, soft-spoken, smiling, seemingly progressive. But their control is more toxic. Richa’s father-in-law, for instance, gently tells her, “Your mother-in-law has a PhD, but she gave it up for family.” There is no demand, no threat... just a suggestion laced with quiet expectation. Here, the subjugation of women is not enforced with violence, but with tradition wrapped in affection.  

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And yet, in toning down the men’s aggressions, the film loses the relentless suffocation that The Great Indian Kitchen built so masterfully. Where Jeo Baby offered no respite — forcing audiences to sit with the weight of unpaid, unacknowledged labour, Mrs. softens the blow. Cooking sequences are turned into aestheticised ‘food porn’, bathed in golden light, romanticised with dancing and music in one scene. Where Nimisha Sajayan’s character in the original film seemed imprisoned by the kitchen, Richa at times appears to enjoy it. Of course, this is a narrative choice to highlight the contrast between her efforts and her family’s anodyne reactions and indifference. But by making cooking look beautiful, the film inadvertently makes the toil seem more bearable than it is. It dilutes the rage. 

A still from 'Mrs.'

And that rage is essential. In The Great Indian Kitchen, it builds and builds, silent but deafening, until it erupts in a climax of absolute catharsis. In Mrs., that eruption feels unearned and the proportion is off. The film spends too much time softening the men’s behaviour and prettifying the suffering, so when Richa finally snaps, the moment doesn’t land with the same gut punch. The silences are filled with explanations, the melancholic music guiding the emotions that should have been left to simmer on their own. The film doesn’t trust the audience to feel the weight of Richa’s oppression without being told to. 

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The leaking pipe remains one of the few metaphors left untouched, unlike the rest of the film’s subtleties, which are spelt out. Richa suggests that the entire plumbing system needs to be ripped out and replaced. And perhaps that is the film’s strongest argument. Patriarchy cannot be fixed by fixing the leak; it is a corroded, broken structure that must be dismantled entirely. Mrs. may not have the unflinching fury of its predecessor, but it plants the seed.  

Yet perhaps there is merit in these choices. Perhaps Mrs. — in being more polished, more palatable — will reach those who would not have engaged with The Great Indian Kitchen. Maybe its aesthetic appeal will lure audiences who might not usually seek out a stark, unrelenting feminist critique. Maybe families will watch it together over dinner. Maybe afterwards, some husbands will finally pick up their plates.

Mrs. will stream on ZEE5 from February 7