All We Imagine As Light lingers on intimacy in the monsoon-drenched rat race
Writer-director Payal Kapadia’s Grand Prix-winner considers the bonds between women in a slow-burn, lyrical drama.
Photo: Janus Films
Bustling bodies blur together like the raindrops pouring from the gray Mumbai sky. Connection is inevitable in All We Imagine Is Light, writer-director Payal Kapadia’s Grand Prix-winner from this year’s Cannes. This is by virtue of sheer numbers—the cramped living quarters, full subways, and busy streets map out an overwhelming urban space—and through commonality of experience. Even made anonymous by the city, its residents aren’t invisible, nor are their problems lonesome in their singularity. Opening with interview-like narration about the city itself, the film immediately situates itself in shared struggles before introducing its specific focus. Kapadia considers the bittersweet bond between women in her second feature, allowing it to breathe in the atmosphere of Southeast Asian slow cinema and Claire Denis’ moody dramas.
Kapadia’s series of encounters focuses on three nurses: one, the flirty Anu (Divya Prabha), in the first throes of passion with a young Muslim man (Hridhu Haroon) and the others old enough to have already been screwed over by the men in their lives. The latter two have been abandoned, either in death like the older widow Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) or in life like the harder-nosed Prabha (Kani Kusruti), whose husband disappeared after getting a job in Germany. The politics of All We Imagine Is Light aren’t entirely cynical, but molded by its country’s discriminatory history and reactionary present. Not every man is threatening, but every man is a potential threat. Every crossed demographic line—like the religious taboo coloring the film’s young courtship—glows bright with danger.