Toxic has a woman problem: Yash, swag, but where's 'female gaze' Geetu promised?

Three years after Yash and Geetu Mohandas announced Toxic, the film is finally in theatres. And after all the waiting, the anticipation and the speculation, one question remains stubbornly unanswered: where is the female gaze Geetu promised?In a throwback interview, Geetu described Toxic as a "gangster film". She said, "It's a gangster genre with a female gaze. How about that?"When the teaser dropped in July, that was the question everyone asked. Now, after three hours of Toxic, a more pointed one takes its place: does the film ever really see its women at all? Rewind to 2023. When Yash and Geetu Mohandas announced their collaboration, eyebrows went up. Here was a star coming off the monumental success of the KGF franchise, joining forces with a filmmaker known for her distinct, uncompromising voice. Would these two very different cinematic worlds click, or would the pairing end up a spectacular miss? There seemed to be little room for anything in between.Multiple postponements, a teaser and a trailer later, Toxic is finally here. The film has already drawn criticism from its early shows, but its biggest disappointment has little to do with whether it works as gangster spectacle. It's the promise that feels most conspicuously broken. Geetu promised a gangster film, and Toxic delivers exactly that — invincible gangsters, violence, power struggles, a world set in pre-colonial Goa. But the female gaze is nowhere in sight.If you haven’t seen Toxic yet, turn back now. From here on, the spoilers come at you faster than Raya’s bullets.Five women, one story Before making that case, it's worth understanding who these five women actually are.Toxic has five formidable actors — Nayanthara, Kiara Advani, Tara Sutaria, Rukmini Vasanth and Huma Qureshi — playing women who, on paper, have enough material to carry the film on their own. Yet the narrative stays firmly anchored to Yash's Raya and Ticket. The women occupy significant portions of the film, but we rarely see the world through their eyes.Nayanthara's Ganga is introduced as Raya's elder sister. The siblings share a troubled childhood, growing up without both parents, left to fend for themselves. Raya acknowledges her sacrifices; when Ganga is hurt, a young Raya doesn't think twice before turning to violence. There's an emotional story buried here — but it's told through Raya, not Ganga. We understand her because Raya understands her. We see her sacrifices because he remembers them. Beyond her protectiveness toward her brother, what does Ganga want? What does she fear? The film gives us almost no access to the woman behind Raya's sister. Tara Sutaria's Rebecca is head over heels in love with Raya, and exists largely in his orbit. We know little about her beyond that relationship. When his adultery devastates her, we see the fallout of his betrayal, but not enough of her point of view on the man who wronged her. Her pain is visible. Her perspective isn't.Kiara Advani's Nadia comes closest to having a gaze of her own — a trapped soul caught between wrong choices, circumstance and Raya's toxic personality. When they're eventually forced apart, she turns to alcohol and meets a tragic end. It's the most compelling arc in the film, if only because it has consequences beyond the romance itself. But even Nadia's story ultimately becomes another way of illustrating Raya's destructive power. We see what he does to her. We don't spend enough time with who she is outside of him.Rukmini Vasanth's Mellisa feels like another variation of Rebecca — a different woman, different circumstances, but still tethered to Raya and his choices. How do these women actually see him? What does it mean to love a man for whom violence is second nature? What does the perpetual fear of losing him do to them? These are rich questions Toxic never bothers to ask.Huma Qureshi's Elizabeth gets the most room to operate outside the conventional romantic framework — until she's reduced to a vengeful woman scheming with her brother. There's scope here to understand what shaped her and how she sees the men around her. The film stops short of exploring it.A gaze isn't a headcountThis is Toxic's biggest contradiction. A female gaze isn't achieved by putting women in important roles or handing talented actors substantial screen time. It requires the film to care about how these women experience the world — their desires, fears, choices and contradictions existing beyond their relationships with the men around them.In Toxic, women are everywhere. The story keeps pulling us back to Raya anyway. Ganga is Raya's sister. Rebecca is Raya's lover. Nadia is Raya's former lover. Mellisa is another woman tied to Raya's world. Elizabeth is caught up in the same power struggle. Their identities are defined, again and again, by proximity to him. That isn't a failure of the characters. It's a failure of perspective. Had Toxic simply been sold as a Yash-led gangster spectacle, this would be an unremarkable choice for a commercial action film. What makes the disappointment sharper is that this is coming from Geetu Mohandas — a woman director who knows her craft, whose body of work has never lacked perspective. She promised something more — a female gaze in a world usually ruled by men, violence and masculine power. Three years on, Toxic arrives with all the noise, scale and swagger of a Yash vehicle. What it doesn't arrive with is the perspective that made this collaboration exciting in the first place.The women are in Toxic, but are they?- EndsPublished On: Aug 27, 2026 06:30 IST