All We Imagine as Light (Theaters)
Payal Kapadia's Grand Prix-winner is a specific and moving portrait of modern Indian life for three women
What’s it about? In Mumbai, Nurse Prabha's routine is troubled when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Her younger roommate, Anu, tries in vain to find a spot in the city to be intimate with her boyfriend.
Who it’s for? Fans of slice-of-life dramas, viewers interested in women-centric stories (especially from female directors), supporters of international cinema, if you like a slow burn
Who should avoid? If you like fast-paced plot, viewers seeking escapism, if you prefer mainstream movie rhythms
Watch if you like: Little Women, Moonlight, Daughters of the Dust, Roma
News and Notes:
Premiered at Cannes 2024
Won the Grand Prix at Cannes
In select theaters today
Schmear’s Verdict: A quietly powerful portrait of friendship and resilience, All We Imagine as Light delicately illuminates the hidden struggles and small mercies that make life bearable for three women navigating Mumbai's relentless pressures.
(This review posted from Cannes)
India’s first main competition entrant in 30 years, All We Imagine as Light, is a disarmingly simple film that belies an immense depth of emotion and humanity.
The film, from female director Payal Kapadia, concerns itself with the intricate, specific lives and pressures of three women of different ages trying to get by in modern-day Mumbai and the small mercies that make life just a little easier.
Before diving in, Kapadia opens up the film with voiceover testimonials of why people moved to Mumbai, playing out over cityscapes. The reasons mentioned don’t paint a glowing picture of the city, nor do the images, and yet this opening sequence plays out calmly with its own paradoxical beauty.
That sets All We Imagine as Light up nicely as we meet a young (old by her colleagues’ standards), tightly wound nurse named Prabha (Kani Kusruti). She’s the feared veteran of the staff, uninterested in movie nights with the team but willing, sternly, to educate the youth at any moment.
While Prabha is not superficially open, her kindness shines through in her actions. She spends the film helping prevent her widowed colleague Parvaty’s (Chhaya Kadam) eviction.
Prabha’s roommate Anu (Divya Prabha) is younger and braver, developing a sullied reputation for dating a young Muslim man in spite of (or maybe because of) the intense pressures her parents are applying on her to wed a Hindu husband, which they’re all too eager to set up.
Shaking our characters out of their torpor is the arrival of a gleaming rice cooker, sans note, from Prabha’s estranged husband in Germany. This being the fulcrum for the events of the film is an understated but intelligent touch.
All We Imagine as Light takes its time, thank you very much, and though I found it a little slow, it’s tonally and rhythmically consistent, finding pockets of intimate beauty within the social verisimilitude.
These women end up helping each other in ways none of them could’ve originally expected, demonstrating the power of friendship and the way relationships can lighten everyday burdens.
The third act sees the trio exiting the city for a breath of fresh air in Parvaty’s beachside town. After the suffocation of Mumbai, the wide-shot arrival at the ocean is liberating. Here, our characters experience their own personal inflection points, ranging from the sexual to the spiritual, yet they rejoin as a found family and prove, literally and metaphorically, that there’s always an extra seat for a friend at life’s table.
