Electric Moon Review | Pradip Krishen’s Boisterous Satire On Facades Is A Timeless Joy

It is quite rare for a film to sustain the pleasure of self-aware humour while retaining its resonance with audiences 34 years later. Screened as part of the lineup at the Red Lorry Film Festival 2026 in Mumbai, the film marks the striking return of Pradip Krishen and Arundhati Roy to the big screen. Another collaboration of theirs, In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989), also received major acclaim during the festival.

Directed by Krishen, Electric Moon stands as a deft satire and drama that examines class, power and cultural complexities with a narrative voice that is incisive and bone-tickling. It deeply understands how culture is repackaged and sold to Western audiences by privileged English-speaking Indians who often perceive themselves as socially aligned with them. If this film were summed up in a single line, it would be that everything is a facade, including the awareness of that facade.

The film’s central strength lies in its treatment of duality—or rather its refusal to rely on it. Electric Moon avoids framing its world through rigid contrasts such as virtue and villainy, integrity and deceit or the colonial divide between the Angrez and the Indian. Instead, it investigates the partial truths embedded in familiar stereotypes—at the same time, it also probes deeper questions of class and race. The narrative unfolds through carefully timed gags, abundant profanity and a series of uncomfortable encounters. Yet, it never loses sight of the object of its satire and occasional admiration: the profit-driven Indian businessman. Within this world, everything and everyone carries a price. The story ultimately becomes the pursuit of three individuals determined to claim control over a jungle where foreign visitors are the primary spectacle.

The story unfolds at Machan Holiday Lodge—a lavish jungle retreat managed by Raja Ran Bikram Singh “Bubbles,” portrayed by Gerson Da Cunha, alongside his sister Sukanya “Socks” (Leela Naidu) and younger brother Ranveer Singh (Roshan Seth). The travel package is a neatly constructed experience that plays on the performative inquisitiveness of foreign tourists. Flower garlands, turbans and elephants appear so frequently, that they invite both eyerolls and amusement. Each cliché persists because it corresponds with what outsiders expect India to represent.

The once-royal yet now struggling family has commodified their heritage for foreigners seeking a desi and conveniently consumable glimpse of poverty. Picture tourists wandering through nearby villages, distributing food and asking residents to name a price to the jewellery they’ve worn. They assume all their whimsies must be met with because they are paying for the “amenities” which, for some, even extend to sexual favours from anyone they choose—including Bubbles.

Conflict arises when the park appoints a new director—the ambitious Rambhuj Goswami (Naseeruddin Shah). The fading aristocrats recoil at his Indian-English accent and ostentatious attire. He embodies the kind of individual shaped by a compromised system and to endure within it, he has gradually aligned himself with its practices. He is shrewd and understands the intricate web of rules and regulations, fully aware of how easily they can be used to dominate others. His purpose, however, remains straightforward: to sell trees and collect the bribes that those very rules place within his reach. 

Despite being set amid the forests of Madhya Pradesh, the characters reveal little genuine commitment to protecting wildlife or trees, despite their frequent claims to the contrary. Between the tussle of the royal family trying to keep their business running and Goswami’s hawk eyes set on them, a delicious cat-and-mouse game is thus witnessed. This is not to say that there is a dearth of interesting characters outside of our protagonists. Even the serving staff and the tourist aids have interiority and a personality of their own.

Take Boltoo (Raghubir Yadav) for example. There’s a scene wherein he exaggerates a tiger sighting and its aftermath—a massacred animal—with such vigour that Sukanya quietly reminds him of it sounding too banawati or fabricated. There’s another scene wherein Johnston shows tourists the gruesome marks on his body from a supposed tiger-attack from his childhood days. He also conveniently carries a newspaper cut-out in his pocket to validate the same. The family’s mistreatment of their staff isn’t as on the nose but it does reveal a certain extent of subhumanity. Their deference toward royalty reveals a complex mix of resentment over their treatment and a lingering desire for proximity to the very figures they elevate—just like the royals see the Angrez. 

Krishen displays notable candour in suggesting that hierarchies between those in power and those subject to it harm both sides. Encounters between the self-confident Westerners and those from the deferential Third World resemble aloofness versus resentment respectively. In a particular scene, Louise (Alice Spivak) poses beside a royal guardsman and slips a meagre currency note in his hands. The guard then mumbles in a line in Hindi that roughly translates to “Didn’t know this bitch was so miserly!” It is unexpected moments like these when seemingly warm hospitality is met with completely contrasting disdain the next moment, adding to the dry humour of the film. The narrative largely unfolds not through a story-heavy plot but through the gradual revelations of its characters moving toward their unavoidable destinies. 

The cinematography by Giles Nuttgens is largely observational, with one scene standing out—the moment Bubbles presents tourists with his colonial-era family photographs, captured through the perspective of a tourist’s camera. Similarly, the film employs silence and ambient sound to create an immersive experience. 

In the final scenes, Bubbles appears adorned as an ornate Maharaja, accompanied by a contingent of snake charmers, a comically large bear, folk dancers and other strikingly exotic figures—all en route to the Festival of India in Denmark. For a film that devotes its entirety to satirising and eliciting humour from these Indian-rooted characters, the experience ultimately leaves the audience with a quiet sense of melancholy over the death of our culture.

It also offers a reflection on modern India, where once-cherished values and traditions have assumed altered meanings and the ideal of secularism has grown increasingly fraught. Despite the challenges of an Indian director working with an international ensemble, the cast integrates effortlessly, producing a timelessly invigorating narrative.