Screening at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix, and India’s first entry in 30 years, Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light is a beautiful tale of three nurses that blurs the line between fiction and documentary.
Not for 30 years has an Indian film competed for the Palme d’Or, and none has ever won. This year, no special pleading was needed to roll out the red carpets for All We Imagine As Light, certainly in the very top tier of contenders and a gorgeous achievement in every way.
Mumbai is put on screen in a manner barely attempted in cinema before, bathed in a shivery, rather secretive nocturnal melancholy. The city’s winking lights form the backdrop to a particular cluster of lives, but we never forget the surging multitude around them.
Before any introductions, we’re thrust into the hubbub of morning commutes and night trains, hearing interview snippets from migrant workers about the chances they’ve seized here; many can’t imagine living anywhere else.
The 38-year-old writer-director, Payal Kapadia, is a Mumbai native and a very special talent who won Cannes’s documentary prize for her last piece, A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021). She has written this one as a fiction feature, but her whole approach blurs the lines: many street scenes, including exuberant festivities, aren’t staged. As a slice of life, it feels caught on the fly, hardly striking a false note; as social drama in the tradition of Satyajit Ray, it’s gentle, unforced, and tenderly protective of the three women it revolves around.
They work as nurses in a hospital, with different degrees of seniority, and look after each other like sisters, despite the odd flare-up. Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha) are housemates with almost opposite, undiscussed romantic problems.
The tightly wound Prabha submitted to an arranged marriage when she was eligible, but her husband abandoned her to work in Germany, and she can’t move on. When he sends her a gleaming new rice cooker, it’s the first she’s heard from him in years, and she has no idea what he means by the gesture.
Meanwhile, the younger, friskier Anu is secretly in love with a Muslim boyfriend called Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), a shy but ardent lad nervous to hear about her sexual experience. She knows that if she ever mentioned him to her parents, they’d forbid the two from ever meeting again.
Together with the eldest, Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), who is contesting a forced eviction, they share an uncertainty about their futures that the film is unlikely to solve – or at least not for all three. Kapadia finds them in what ought to be transitional states, which still could last a lifetime: forces of disapproval hold these women back as much as their meagre earnings.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.For all this, her film is a million miles from a tract — it understands good days and bad days, and how most lives experience these as a rolling lottery. Poignantly lyrical as a city symphony, it branches out for a sequel, when the characters abscond to the coast to figure out what to do: at once a respite and a reckoning, ghostly and mysterious. There’s a beautiful sex scene. Hardly a shot lacks ambient magic, like the bunting agitated by a sea breeze. Kapadia would be robbed to go away empty-handed.
More film
In-depth profiles and fascinating features.
Tales of beauty and its price galvanise Cannes. From Anora to The Substance, the festival films have turned their focus to the power and pitfalls of beauty.
‘Challengers’ stars put new spins (and slices and volleys) on the love triangle. Zendaya, Luca Guadagnino, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist on the sizzling sports drama.
Black satire is having its Hollywood moment. But is something missing?
‘The Idea of You’ review: Anne Hathaway tries to survive celebrity in this pop romance. She headlines a movie that’s got a lot to say about the perils of fame.
‘The Shining’ star Shelley Duvall vanished from Hollywood. Now, she’s returned to acting. The actor is known for her roles in era-defining films. But what happened to her?
