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Agra Review: A Deeply Unsettling Study of Masculinity Under Strain

Kanu Behl’s Cannes-premiering family drama makes domestic space central to a troubling study of sexual frustration, patriarchal power and the search for autonomy.
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Agra is a 132-minute family drama about sexual frustration, contested property and the lack of privacy. Kanu Behl’s film follows Guru, a young call-center employee living with his parents, as private fantasies and a search for intimacy collide with the power struggles inside his family home. Its most unsettling idea is also its clearest: freedom is bound up with who gets space, and who controls it.

What is Agra about?

Directed by Kanu Behl and written by Behl and Atika Chohan, Agra places Guru’s desires inside a home shared with his parents and shaped by competing claims to space and property. The official Directors’ Fortnight description says his frustration leads into fantasies, dating apps and self-harm. Rather than treating these as detached episodes, the film’s premise ties them to his constrained domestic life.

The title may suggest a portrait of a city, but the festival synopsis centers on Guru’s family and the home they contest. The pressure is intimate: rooms, privacy and the possibility of a separate life become sources of conflict. The official description makes that connection explicit, framing Guru’s emancipation as dependent on access to property.

How the film connects sexuality, space and power

The film’s strongest idea is that sexual frustration is not simply a private problem. In Agra, it takes shape within a family structure where privacy and authority are unevenly distributed. Cineuropa’s May 25, 2023 review likewise reads the story through restricted space, sexuality, money and patriarchal power. That is a critical interpretation of this film, not a claim that one character represents every Indian family or every man.

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Seen through that lens, domestic space does more than provide a setting. Access to rooms and property marks the limits of what Guru can claim for himself. The conflict over the home gives physical form to a broader struggle over autonomy: the ability to desire, to be alone and to imagine a future not dictated by others.

The Directors’ Fortnight description calls the film’s approach “Agra grasps the reality of patriarchy in India through the prism of male sexual misery.” The phrasing points to the film’s focus without making Guru’s pain an excuse for his behavior or reducing the drama to a sociological illustration.

Why Agra is unsettling—and sometimes funny

The official festival page describes the film as “monstrous and funny.” That pairing matters. Its grotesque humor offers a tonal counterweight to distress, but it does not make the subject comfortable or promise an easy viewing experience. The humor and unease sit together, preserving the awkwardness and excess of the film’s material rather than smoothing it into solemn social realism.

Behl has discussed an interest in sexual repression and in the film’s approach to masculine energy in interviews with Cinema Express, Cineuropa and The Indian Express. Those discussions help situate the film’s interest in masculinity, but its impact depends on how its domestic conflicts and tonal shifts work together on screen.

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Performances and Cannes reception

The principal cast includes Mohit Agarwal as Guru, Priyanka Bose as Priti, Vibha Chibber as Mummy, Rahul Roy as Daddy, Aanchal Goswami as Chhavi, Sonal Jha as Aunty and Ruhani Sharma as Mala. In a May 24, 2023 review for Screen Daily, Namrata Joshi praised the complexity of the characters and singled out Bose, Agarwal and Roy among the ensemble. That is one critic’s assessment, rather than a claim of critical consensus.

Agra premiered at the 2023 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. The Government of India’s 2023–24 annual report records the premiere in May 2023. Its festival context helps explain why the film is often approached as an abrasive, formally ambitious drama, but the central question remains close to home: who has room to live privately, and what happens when that access is denied?

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Who should watch Agra?

This is a strong choice for viewers interested in difficult character studies that connect private distress to family structures and material power. Its focus is not a broad survey of Indian society, nor is its premise a conventional romance or city portrait. The film stays with Guru’s particular circumstances and the charged family space around him. Viewers looking for a restrained or comforting drama may find its mixture of sexual misery, self-harm, grotesque humor and domestic conflict abrasive.

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