13/25
In Mumbai, nurse Prabhat’s routine 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 to be close to her lover. Director Payal Kapadia and the cast of All We Imagine As Light come together to share the most heartwarming reactions from the film at Cannes and more!. The first Indian film to win the prestigious Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024. The film dramatizes the many challenges faced by single women living in Bombay and highlights their resilience. All the women here are nurses in the same hospital, but each has their own specific set of problems and solutions, so the similarities end there. The ever-changing emotions as the story quietly unfolds are longing, fear, regret, and aching patience. Perhaps the biggest asset is the script, which offers unusually rich and thoughtful dialogue between the characters. The amount of action in the plot, even when lying or pretending, seems to provide a platform for conversations that are unusually honest and vulnerable with each other. The acting is uniformly excellent and rises to the level of the writing — there are no false notes, but there are some fascinating loose ends. The photography and editing are also quite adept at creating a reflective and somewhat detached atmosphere, complementing the quiet intensity of the character interactions. The detachment is amplified in a few places where the film incorporates documentary elements or certainly creates such a feeling. I wasn’t always crazy about the music and how it appealed, but that’s a minor quibble that many may not share. I would dispute another reviewer’s claim that this film was conceived as « awards bait. » In my opinion, this film has too much heart and honesty to be categorized as cynical or manipulative – certainly no more than any other film that tries to tell an important story in a charming and beautiful way. And it takes too many risks for me to imagine it would do well in an increasingly sectarian and puritanical India. I highly recommend « All We Imagine as Light. »