Maja Ma review: Madhuri Dixit earns her calling in this coming-out drama

In a scene from Amazon Prime’s Maja Ma, a son tells his mother “Maine tumhe bhagwan Mana par tumne toh mera dharam hi cheen liya”. Mothers have been central to our cinema, its naïve conflation of statehood and morality and in Maja Ma, the mother, again becomes the site of contested morality. This film is backwards in a number of ways and it endures just enough to ask some deep, potent questions about sexuality and gender roles. The only problem is that while the film has its sights set on a disconcerting subject, it doesn’t quite possess the instruments to thread it with sensitivity and care. Maja Ma is headlined by some accomplished performances, especially by its senior actors, but it is also bafflingly boneheaded in places where the writing ought to have been wiser than it actually is.

Maja Ma is the coming out story of Pallavi, played by a graceful Madhuri Dixit . A mother to two children and devoted wife to endearingly flawed but charming Manohar ( Gajraj Rao in familiar form), Pallavi’s secret is randomly outed in the first leg itself. The impetus here is not on public acceptance but on a woman’s own inward journey towards a reckoning of sorts – a promising detour from recent films of a similar disposition. The broader narrative concerns Pallavi’s son Tejas ( Ritwik Bhowmik ) and his attempt to woo, not just his to-be wife but also her parents – here visiting their Gujarati home from America. Pam (Sheeba Chaddha) and Bob (Rajit Kapoor) are NRIs visiting to audit the socio-cultural origins of the man their daughter has chosen. All that’s fine until you’re also told the same NRI couple are freakishly conservative, employ drastic measures to evaluate purity and sanctity and speak in some of the funniest, fake accents you’ll see onscreen this year.

Chaddha and Kapoor soldier on despite their horrendous accents and put-on cockiness, but they come across more as sociopaths than actual Indian parents who just aren’t as woke as their passports might suggest – believable otherwise. As for the story, in an argument with her gender activist daughter, Pallavi happens to spurt out that she is a lesbian. For some reason, a kid secretly records the video and spreads it on personal and neighbourhood socials. The mechanics is awful, unconvincing and pasty each step of the way. The narrative laziness aside, there are also question marks over the clunky characterisation of Pallavi’s son and daughter. Both are diametrically opposite in terms of their beliefs and also stunningly inadequate as humans who are also supposed to be modern, privileged millennials in today’s day and age. The reluctance is understandable, but the denial, the borderline offensive reactions feel oddly bemusing.

The performances, especially of the younger actors don’t always stick but Maja Ma is also evidence of the learned charm of experienced actors who can turn it on with the flick of a switch. Gajraj Rao is delightful again, in a role that we’ve seen him do before. He has become the master of playing empathetic middle-aged men. The star of the film, however, is Madhuri Dixit, who despite a hammy script that let’s go of her inner secrets early in the film, maintains the restrained poise of a woman, whose truth here comes to her last. Pallavi’s sexuality is a matter of public debate long before, she takes the brave step to contemplate what is being said. This knotty moral conundrum that Pallavi must confront as a personal journey, is the highlight of a film that can often oscillate between massy tropes and meaningful depths. A sequence where Manohar accidentally takes a Viagra, is serviceable but also echoes the dilemma at the heart of the film, the many paths it could take but ultimately doesn’t.

With subject matter as complicated and sensitive as this film is trying to broach, jokes around unanticipated erections feel like odd tonal shifts trying to allay the grimness that has taken over the film. For that matter, the first five minutes of the film, the farcical employment of a polygraph test thrown in, points to a whacky, loud comedy that will use the collision of two cultures to extract both humour and commentary. None of that, however, materialises as the film keeps jutting back and forth between sentimentality, familial boundaries and coarse attempts at retaining some lightness.

That said, Maja Ma isn’t a complete waste, thanks largely to Rao and Dixit, both in top form here as a humble middle-class couple – something that never quite explored for all its intricate complexities. Rather than address the social scrutiny surrounding the outing of a middle-aged woman, I would have liked the film to focus on the dynamics of the middle-aged couple on whom this new challenge, late in life, especially feels the hardest. Instead, Maja Ma becomes a testy, often tiresome exploration of motherhood, where Pallavi seems more accountable to her demanding children. Nonetheless, the fact that an actress as iconic as Dixit is happy to pull a version of her own former self, decades later, out of the closet, is victory enough.

Maja Ma is streaming on Amazon Prime Video

Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.

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