Birth movie review: Shreya Dhanwanthary, Lillette Dubey’s short doesn’t quite deliver

Only recently has the mainstream begun delving into the paranoia around pregnancies, along with the pain and trauma associated with childbirth, making it almost a subgenre unto itself. Whether it’s the breathtaking 24-minute single take in Pieces of a Woman (2020) or the distressing childbirth scene that appeared in last week’s pilot of The House of the Dragons (2022), the harrowing process that would conveniently take place off-screen until not very long ago, is now getting more attention front and centre. In Shyam Sunder’s short film Birth, starring Shreya Dhanwanthary and Lilette Dubey, the narrative takes place closer home.

Meera (Dhanwanthary) is eight months pregnant, and is having nightmares about what is to come. In a darkly comic first scene, she stares in disbelief as her partner (Abeer Meherish) is asked to choose between saving the child or her. She wakes up in a pool of sweat, soon after.

At least in the beginning, Birth reminded me of Rakhee Sandhilya’s Ribbon – another film that seemed curious (and not judgmental) about a woman’s state of mind during a pregnancy. In the 2017 film, Kalki Koechlin plays the role of an ambitious young woman, who refreshingly expresses her fear and anxieties about how motherhood is going to change her life. Similarly in Birth, Dhanwanthary’s Meera seems like someone driven, who wants to ‘get it right’ – and her emotions therefore often spill over to her husband and her subordinates. There’s a beautiful little moment in the backseat of a car, where Meera longingly looks at Sushant while he’s mindlessly scrolling through his phone, and later Sushant leans over to Meera for a kiss/embrace before she gets down, but then she’s already left. Rarely do films discuss how intimacy between a couple changes during a pregnancy.

Meera attends a maternity care centre (lazily) named “Happy Moms”. Over here, Meera along with other expecting mothers, do breathing exercises, share their anxieties along with tidbits– like how coffee might be ‘poison’ for the baby. Mama Nithya (Lillette Dubey), who has an unsettling presence given how she wears a prosthetic belly probably in solidarity with the pregnant women, conducts these sessions. Meera and Nithya’s equation is an intriguing one: the more Meera seeks actual answers, the more Nithya confuses her with vague verbiage.

“Happy Moms” appears to have a cult-like setting, replete with symbols, costumes and rituals. At first, it seems like the short film is trying to satirise how unhelpful society is for expecting mothers, despite all the wealth of experiences and knowledge out there. However, it’s at this maternity care centre, when the film’s tone shifts from being a satire to being somewhat of a thriller, is when the film begins to derail. The scenes play out incoherently, and there are massive blanks left for the viewers to fill. The ‘twist’ feels dull and typical for such short films.

Dhanwanthary, who has made a career out of playing urban women with cut-throat ambition, is again in fine form here. The problem is how the short goes about treating the veteran Dubey. As Mama Nithya, Dubey has never seemed more opaque, never straddling the lines between being the pushy neighbourhood aunty or a creepy cult leader out to steal babies from their mothers. In a bid to be both – she ends up somewhere in between (or as some might argue, nowhere at all).

The short works Braxton Hicks into the film’s dialogue a few times, suggesting that the short might have worked better as a drama – sincerely trying to dissect the pressures of a pregnant woman. The heavy handedness with which the film is turned into a “thriller” – becomes the undoing of the short.

The premise of Shyam Sunder’s Birth is an interesting one – and it surely has a few merits of its own. However, the end product doesn’t quite match up to its initial promise, and that’s a
tragedy.

1.5 (out of 5) stars

Birth, starring Shreya Dhanwanthary and Lillette Dubey, is streaming on Disney+Hotstar.

Tatsam Mukherjee has been working as a film journalist since 2016. He is based out of Delhi NCR.

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