Dukaan

"Dukaan" arrives with an ambitious premise—exploring surrogacy through the lens of a woman's reinvention and the moral quicksand it creates. Director Rishab Ojha attempts to mine genuine emotional conflict from the collision between contractual obligation and maternal instinct, and there are moments where the film grazes something raw and true. The supporting cast, particularly in scenes depicting the sisterhood between surrogates, brings authenticity to what could have been reductive character work. However, the narrative frequently defaults to melodrama when it should lean into moral ambiguity. The lead performance, while committed, struggles to navigate the tonal shifts—swinging between hollow detachment and overwrought vulnerability without finding the nuanced middle ground the role demands. The second act drags considerably, padding runtime with scenes that merely repeat emotional beats rather than deepen them.

The film's central flaw is structural: it treats surrogacy as a plot device rather than a genuine exploration of bodily autonomy and systemic desperation. By the final act, "Dukaan" abandons its sociological teeth entirely, collapsing into conventional courtroom sentiment that betrays the complexity it spent two hours building. The cinematography is competent but uninspired, and the background score leans heavily on strings to manufacture tears the screenplay hasn't earned. What lingers isn't the philosophical weight of its premise, but the sense of a film that k