Film Review | Women’s Work and Wisdom

Indian Film ‘All We Imagine as Light’ — Winner of the Cannes Grand Prix —is a Soulful, Subtle Portrait of Three Women, in Three Languages

Poster for 'All We Imagine As Light' | Photo: Courtesy

There is a point in the slow moving yet deeply moving Indian film All We Imagine as Light, a moment which will go unspecified, when a fantasy/dream sensibility suddenly takes the floor. After we have settled into the erstwhile, realism-based narrative, about the lives of three women working in a Mumbai hospital — a dollop of surrealism both surprises and enriches our understanding.

Dreams can be like that. So can sentient cinema, an art form often driven by the twin engines of dreams and storyboarded reality.

In a story of urban pressures and struggles of the not-necessarily-upwardly mobile women characters, we might expect some rough edges in the picture. But writer-director Payal Kapadia opts for a more soft-edged, soulful, and subtle approach. She has created something unique here, clearly belonging on the index of most notable cinematic achievements of 2024. With this, her first fiction feature (after 2021’s acclaimed documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing), Kapadia became the first Indian woman to win a coveted prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the Grand Prix.

Despite the seemingly smooth clarity and simplicity of the film, it is, at its core, a tale with complex dramatic underpinnings and social commentaries. The power of three is in effect — as a portrait of three very different women, compassionately interconnected, and in three languages — Malayalam, Hindi, and Marathi.

Shot with an unforced, naturalistic feel and flow, the film — abetted by exotic piano flourishes by the artist known as Emahoy (1923-2023) and cinematographer Ranabir Das’s cool, affectionate eye — follows the entwined fates of nurses, each with their specific sets of issues and societal tensions. The centering character is Prabha, beautifully portrayed by Kani Kusruti, a grounded persona but one whose life has been impacted by forced marriage and a husband gone MIA in Germany. The younger Anu (Divya Prabha) braves the cultural and racist divide in India through secret love and counters with her Muslim boyfriend. In the third plot quadrant, hospital cook Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) suffers the disruption of eviction — making way for a gentrifying high rise project — and a return to her past village life in the coastal town of Ratnagiri, in the southwestern region of India.

In the film structure, that flight from the pressurized urban landscape to Ratnagiri’s remote seaside setting comprises most of the third act. Tensions are variously resolved, lovers united and spirits liberated amidst the gently lapping waves. Suddenly, the phrase “all we imagine as light” begins to make poetic sense. This is a film you soak into, and its tonic effects linger. We need more of that right about now.

View the trailer here.