21/47
In Mumbai, Prabha’s sister’s daily life is disrupted when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Her younger roommate Anu tries in vain to find a place in the city where she can have an intimate relationship with her boyfriend. Director Payal Kapadia and the cast of All We Imagine As Light come together to share the most touching reactions from Cannes and beyond. ! The first Indian film to win the prestigious Grand Prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. This film dramatizes the many challenges faced by single women in Bombay and highlights their resilience. Here, each woman is a nurse in the same hospital, but that’s where the similarities end, as each has her own unique problem and, so to speak, a solution. Desire, fear, regret and steadfast patience are the emotions that alternate as the story quietly unfolds. Perhaps the biggest asset is the screenplay, which offers unusually rich and thoughtful dialogue between the characters. The amount of action seems to provide a foundation for conversations in which people have room to be unusually honest and careless with each other, even if they’re lying or posing. The acting is uniformly excellent, rising to the level of the writing — there are no false notes, though there are some nagging loose ends. The photography and editing also do a pretty good job of capturing the reflective and somewhat detached atmosphere, complemented by the quiet intensity of the characters’ interactions. The demarcation is heightened at a few points where the film seems to have documentary elements, or so it seems. I haven’t always been crazy about music and how to summon it, but it’s a minor gimmick that not many people share. I take issue with another reviewer’s claim that this film was intended as “awards bait.” In my opinion, this film has too much heart and sincerity to be categorized as cynical or manipulative — certainly not like any other film that seeks to tell an important story in a compelling and beautiful way. And this film takes a lot of risks, which I can’t imagine will go down well in an increasingly sectarian and puritanical India. I highly recommend “All We Imagine as Light”.