Vague Visages’ Flowers of Acacia review contains minor spoilers. Anmol Sidhu’s 2026 movie features Jasskirat Bajwa, Harmandeep Singh and Zainab Rajpoot. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

For his sophomore feature, Flowers of Acacia (Kikkran De Phull), Anmol Sidhu draws on a true story about orchestra dancers who perform at weddings, and grounds the drama in their personalities, desires and everyday struggles. Beneath this intimate portrait lies a deeper examination of the ways power can disguise itself as civility, procedure and selective virtue.

At the center of this precarious world is Neetu (Shivam Kamboj), who runs an orchestra-dance troupe in rural Punjab with his friend Makhan (Harmandeep Singh), whose wife, Rani (Jasskirat Bajwa), is among the dancers. The troupe also includes Simmi (Priyangshee), Pinky (Reetika Thakur), Rosi (Zainab Rajpoot) and Riya (Yashika Sharma), with each character carrying their own burdens and hopes of finding a way beyond the limits imposed on them. Sidhu resists the pull of easy drama in Flowers of Acacia, as there are no redemptive arcs, heroic gestures or neatly earned moral triumphs. Instead, the protagonists’ lives gradually reveal how difficult it is to escape circumstances that have shaped them for years.

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Sidhu’s debut, Jaggi (2022), examines masculinity with an incisive intensity. Flowers of Acacia turns that scrutiny towards women whose agency is continually negotiated within a culture that treats their existence as spectacle and commodity. Yet the film resists presenting the orchestra dancers as passive victims. Their on-stage performances become a complicated form of labor. Though it provides them with an income and a certain measure of independence, the lewd gaze surrounding them constantly threatens to reduce that autonomy to objectification. Flowers of Acacia is unflinching in showing how humiliation can become ordinary — not because its subjects accept it, but rather as a result of repeated exposure to indignities that can make resistance feel like another luxury.

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What gives these women their complexity is the distance between what they want and what their circumstances allow. Sidhu neither romanticizes the protagonists’ resilience nor turns their hardships into easy lessons in empowerment. Their ambitions remain entangled with class, economic insecurity and the limits imposed on their bodies and choices. Survival is not simply a matter of enduring hardship, as it means deciding, again and again, how much of oneself can be given up without losing a sense of identity. Across these lives, dignity and security remain uncertain comforts, always vulnerable to the conditions that make survival possible.

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Sidhu extends his patriarchy critique to the men who inhabit this world, refusing to categorize them neatly as perpetrators or protectors. Some exercise authority openly, while others are constrained by the same economic and social structures they help sustain. What makes Sidhu’s treatment of masculinity intriguing is his resistance to easy moral categories: men can be exploiters, victims and beneficiaries of the same system, and sometimes occupy all three positions at once. Wealth gives the men who possess it both the means to exploit and the supremacy to control. It authorizes them to dictate the terms on which others must live, and determines not only who has the freedom to speak but also who is expected to endure. Thus, gender is presented not as an innate condition but as something shaped — and often distorted — by unequal influence, economic dependence and the desire to dominate.

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The film’s technical choices quietly deepen its observational quality. Pardeep Taina’s cinematography frequently frames the characters in long shots and extended single takes. The approach lends the locations a spare, atmospheric realism, creating the sense that viewers are simply present as the protagonists’ lives unfold. The dance sequences are especially telling, filmed without glamour or spectacle, with the camera maintaining its distance and allowing the performances to remain part of the women’s working lives without consciously objectifying them. The editing by Nilesh Maniyar adopts the same patience via lingering shots that create tension, discomfort and dramatic emotions. And there is barely a conventional background score. Sidhu and Deep Chander’s sound design gives the spaces a voice of their own, with wedding music, naturalistic dialogue and ambient noise being integral to the film’s aural texture. The result is quietly immersive, making the world feel observed and inhabited rather than constructed.

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The actors rarely push emotions beyond what the scenes require, and that balance gives the characters a sense of life beyond the immediate drama. Bajwa gives Rani a strong moral center, refusing to let men put a price on her body while standing her ground when she believes something is wrong. Singh’s Makhan is more openly supportive, though he has troubles of his own, and the actor captures the uncertainty of a man trying to do right by those around him while struggling to find his own footing. Shivam Kamboj is particularly good as Neetu, finding a careful balance between his concern for the women and his instinct for self-interest. Priyangshee and Rajpoot bring similar restraint to Simmi and Rosi, respectively — two women trying to make their way through lives that rarely give them much room to breathe. Thakur brings a grounded quality to Pinky, while Sharma captures Riya’s fragility as she encounters a world she is not yet prepared for. What holds these performances together is their refusal to turn the characters into mouthpieces for a social issue, as the actors collectively create a solid impression of mortals who are flawed, resilient and simply trying to get through the day.

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Flowers of Acacia is a hard-hitting film that resists the comfort of easy answers. Sidhu leaves audiences wondering how much a life is valued when it is lived at the lower rungs of society, where vulnerability can so easily become an invitation to oppression.

Dipankar Sarkar (@Dipankar_Tezpur) is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic based in India. As a freelancer, he regularly contributes to various Indian publications on cinema-related topics.

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