17/28
In Mumbai, nurse Prabha’s routine is thrown into disarray when she receives an unexpected gift from her ex-husband. Her younger roommate, Anu, tries in vain to find a place in the city to be intimate with her boyfriend. Director Payal Kapadia and the cast of All We Imagine As Light reunite to share their most moving reactions from Cannes and more. !. The first Indian film to receive the prestigious Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024, this film dramatizes many of the challenges faced by single women living in Mumbai and highlights their resilience. All the women here are nurses at the same hospital, but that’s where the similarities end, as each has her own set of problems and, one might say, solutions. Desire, fear, regret and impassive patience are the emotions that alternate continuously as the story quietly unfolds. Probably the greatest asset is the script, which offers extraordinarily rich and thoughtful dialogues between the characters. The amount of action in the plot feels like enough to provide a basis for conversations where people have room to be unusually honest and unguarded with each other, even when they’re lying or posing. The acting is uniformly excellent and rises to the level of the writing—there are no false notes, though there are a few tantalizing loose ends. The cinematography and editing are also very good at creating a reflective, somewhat detached atmosphere that complements the hushed intensity of the characters’ interactions. The detachment is amplified at several points where the film seems to incorporate documentary elements or certainly creates that kind of feeling. I haven’t always been crazy about the music and the way it’s invoked, but that’s a small issue that many may not share. I dispute another reviewer’s claim that this film was intended as “awards bait.” In my opinion, there’s too much heart and honesty in this film for it to be classified as cynical or manipulative—certainly no more so than any other film that seeks to tell an important story in a compelling and beautiful way. And this film takes a lot of risks that I can’t imagine would go over well in increasingly sectarian and puritanical India. I highly recommend “All We Imagine as Light.”