Tighee Review | Jeejivisha Kale's Transcendent Portrait Of Womanhood Centres A Volatile Mother–Daughter Trio

It is no surprise that Marathi films have always carried the trophy home for exquisite writing and cinema. It is through gems like Tighee (2026) that this faith is ever-persistently replenished. The thing about dysfunctional families that most films fail to understand is that home is not always a bleak and tense space. That in fact, humour slips in between grief, anger and hopelessness alike. Tighee lives and breathes within this complexity. Roughly translating to “three of us”, Jeejivisha Kale’s film deals with a mother-daughter trio consisting of Hemalata (Bharati Achrekar) and her daughters Swati (Nehha Pendse) and Sarika (Sonalee Kulkarni). 

The air in their Pune residence is thick with resentment accumulated over the years. All three of them are volatile and seem like they could crack any second. Sarika lives with their ill mother, taking the full-time role of a caretaker, abandoning any semblance of a personal life. Swati, on the other hand, lives with her estranged husband Malhar (Pushkaraj Chirputkar) in Mumbai. As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that the sisters harbour unspoken grudges toward one another. The film beautifully explores these tensions, allowing the conflicts to surface gradually while suggesting that much more lingers beneath.

Pendse and Kulkarni form a moving pair as siblings navigating the declining health of their mother. Throughout their lives, there’s a shadow of absence leaning heavy on the sisters’ lives—their seemingly deceased father. Kale manages to paint a picture of a mother’s difficult choices and the sisters’ coping mechanisms with undeniable grace.

The quaint little residence is heavy with traces of a believable history, composed with gentleness—shadows of trees, a humble balcony, soft white curtains, a colourful kitchen along with a cot where Hemalata rests. Veteran actor Achrekar is phenomenal as matriarch Hemalata—navigating her own emotions towards death, the complications amongst her daughters along with a certain truth she hasn’t quite disclosed to them.

Sarika wants to build a life and identity of her own through a startup venture alongside her long-time friend and business partner (Nipun Dharmadhikari). Meanwhile Swati is crushed under loans and the plight of not being able to quit her toxic job due to bills piling high. On top of that, her creepy boss (Jaimini Pathak) leaves no stone unturned to exploit her vulnerability during a difficult time in her life.

As the film highlights moments of extreme compromise, past trauma and the everyday reality of violence against women, it paints a portrait not just of victims but of survival. At its core, the film attempts to conjure up every experience of womanhood tainted by a burning patriarchal world—as women attempt to pry away their right to a dignified life.

Sarika’s friend picks up a little puppy from the street to surprise his daughter and the trio end up fostering it for a few days. The dog brings a fleeting sense of whimsy into the household, even as it stirs unexpected, existential reflections in Hemalata while the family quietly prepares for her eventual decline. There are several powerful and stirring moments in the film: Hemalata calling her daughters and giving them “the final talk” multiple times, unsure if it will be the last time she can express her feelings and decisions as she awaits her demise; Swati finally stepping up for herself; and Sarika accepting the burdens life places upon her. Together, the sisters and their mother share a deeply complicated yet breathtaking on-screen relationship—one that evokes both warmth and a quiet knot in the heart.

The film’s unpredictability carries anxiety, hope and anger, cascading through its screenplay at once. A profound line within the film—roughly translated as, “even leaves don’t have free will before they fall”—reflects on life, death and the faint glimmering hope binding them. Tighee becomes a refreshing gift for those craving a family drama that is neither subtle nor heavy-handed—attempting to mend generational divides, emotional distance, parental absence and career ambitions within a man’s world.

The red thread tethering familial bonds is frail but all-encompassingly enmeshing. In the middle of it all are also moments of dark humour surrounding the inevitability of death, faint chuckles and plenty of the “you were picked up from a dumpster” kind of sibling banter.

What works in the favour of this film is its heartwarming intent along with masterful writing by Prajakt Deshmukh and Nikhil Mahajan. This is perhaps one of the rare few times that a film has evoked what Shoojit Sircar’s sublime Piku (2015) made audiences feel. It’s truly remarkable that within a hundred-minute runtime, this film manages to delve into so many facets of each character with such sincerity and sensitivity and still carry a backbone.