Suresh Triveni’s Netflix film Maa Behen is, on the surface, a dark, comic crime caper about a dead body that refuses to stay quietly out of the way. But underneath its chaotic plotting and flamboyant storytelling lies a story of women who refuse to be bogged down by patriarchy.

Rekha, Jaya, Sushma — these three names had become synonymous with ‘sanskari’ domesticated women, thanks to a popular 1990s ad about a washing powder. Triveni turns these names into characters who are domesticated women, alright, but won’t give up on their agency.

The film opens in the middle of a crisis. Rekha (Madhuri Dixit), a middle-aged widow living in Patna, finds herself staring at the corpse of her neighbour Charitra Gupta (Ravi Kishan) in her living room. It’s night. Panic is inevitable. She seeks the help of her two estranged daughters: Jaya (Triptii Dimri), the overburdened “ideal” daughter trapped in a stifling marriage, and Sushma (Dharna Durga), a social media influencer chasing visibility in a world that rewards spectacle over substance.

By morning, the three women are together, staring at the same problem but refusing to see it the same way. Rekha offers a long, confusing account of what happened. It sounds suspicious, even made-up. The daughters don’t fully believe her, but disbelief doesn’t stop them from helping. The body still has to be dealt with.

From there, Maa Behen expands into a spiralling dramedy involving ransom calls, suspicious relatives, a lovelorn cop, a missing person angle, and a neighbourly ecosystem that thrives on speculation.

What makes Maa Behen stand out is not the dead body in the room—it’s the way the film examines how stories are built around women long before facts ever arrive.

A large part of the film is shaped through a sensational TV crime show called Khalbali. Here, Rekha and her daughters are not real people—they are headlines waiting to be judged. Rekha is painted as a seductive, morally questionable widow. Jaya becomes the scheming “good daughter gone wrong.” Sushma is reduced to a social media temptress. The show doesn’t investigate; it declares. It turns gossip into truth and speculation into fact.

This framing device is where the film finds its sharpest edge. Maa Behen isn’t just showing how society talks about women but how easily that talk becomes accepted reality. The film leans into exaggeration and stylisation, almost mimicking the loud, judgment-heavy tone of true-crime entertainment.

Rekha, Jaya, and Sushma are constantly judged not just by outsiders but by each other, too. Their arguments are shaped by the same stereotypes that follow them everywhere else. At times, they even repeat those judgments back at one another, as if they’ve internalised the very stories used to control them.

Madhuri Dixit plays Rekha not as a victim or a caricature, but as someone who has learned to survive by constantly adapting the story around her. There’s humour in her confusion, but also a spirit of resilience that holds the character together.

Triptii Dimri’s Jaya stands out for her controlled intensity. She plays a woman trained to be “ideal” on the surface while quietly suffocating underneath it. The tension between who she is and who she’s expected to be gives her track real weight. And don’t miss her monologue when she finally lets the volcano erupt.

Dharna Durga, as Sushma, brings freshness into the mix. She avoids turning the character into a stereotype of a modern influencer and instead gives her a raw, impulsive energy.

Where the film occasionally slips is in its ambition to juggle too many threads at once. The police investigation, ransom subplot, and some side characters don’t always carry equal weight.