Film Review - All We Imagine as Light
Payal Kapadia's slice-of-life drama about the lives of three working class women in Mumbai exudes warmth and humanity
The lives of working class women in modern Mumbai provide the focus of this slice-of-life grounded drama from Payal Kapadia. All We Imagine as Light was a big success at Cannes (it won the Grand Prix), though it will not be competing in the Best International Film category at this year’s Oscars. However, regardless of awards, those with a penchant for slow-burn realist cinema would do well to seek this out.
Prabha (Kani Kusruti), Anu (Divya Prabha), and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) are the three women around whom the drama focuses, but the film opens with voiceovers from real Mumbai residents, discussing life in the city and the city’s identity. These voiceovers return at a couple of key interludes, perhaps partially as a nod to Kapadia’s prior documentary work. They also underscore the difficulties faced by the three leads.
Anu and Prabha live together and are both nurses at the local hospital. The former is outgoing and rebellious, secretly romantically involved with Muslim boy Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon) whilst ducking an attempt at arranged marriage from her Hindu parents. Prabha is more responsible and altruistic, helping her co-worker and friend Parvaty when she hits legal problems related to her housing. Here, there’s a smidgen of rich versus poor social commentary that has a whiff of Ken Loach to it, though without the same levels of axe-grinding anger.
Prabha is also dealing with abandonment since her husband (by arranged marriage) has fled abroad to Germany, leaving her in limbo, unable to contact him. However, he evidently knows where she lives, as an anonymous gift of a rice cooker gives him away because a label reads “made in Germany”. With her marriage in such a state, Prabha wonders whether she should respond to the delicate advances of Dr Manoj (Azees Nedumangad), a doctor at her hospital who doesn’t care that she’s married.
This is beautifully acted by all concerned, with subtlety and poignancy. Kapadia’s direction makes deft use of tight, cluttered spaces in the urban scenes, emphasising the challenges faced by these women. Lack of electricity, windows that don’t shut properly, and a general inability to make ends meet lurk around the fringes of the story. At the same time, there’s a vibrancy to scenes involving streets, markets, trains, and festive celebrations that gives the film a joyful counterpoint. For example, Anu’s life in Mumbai is an escape from the rural traditions of her mother (whose phone calls she constantly tries to avoid).
When the film relocates to a remote coastal area for its final movement, Kapadia’s tone shifts, with clever contrasts coming into play. There’s a poetic, almost magical realist atmosphere in later scenes; a dreamlike counterpoint to the earlier grittiness. In lesser hands, this would jar, but here it feels organic. Of course, this will frustrate some audiences, especially those expecting a closed, definitive ending to the various plot threads. But the character arcs of all concerned do feel satisfying.
Not for everyone, then, but All We Imagine as Light has a beautifully haunting quality, marking Payal Kapadia as a talent to watch, with warmth and humanity to spare.
(Originally published at Medium.)
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