All We Imagine as Light review: First Indian Cannes Grand Prix winner is brilliant drama

Payal Kapadia’s fictional debut is a tactful female-led drama following two Mumbai nurses dealing with their troubled relationships

All We Imagine as Light is the first Indian film to win the Grand Prix at Cannes Film Festival. Photo: Condor Distribution

Winner of the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, writer-director Payal Kapadia’s first fiction feature All We Imagine as Light is a brilliant female-led drama. The Mumbai-born filmmaker explores the themes of loneliness, love and womanhood in today’s India, and does so with a delicate, tactful approach.

Notably, the picture film is the first from India to compete in the French event’s main competition since Shaji N Karun’s 1994 drama Swaham, and Kapadia was first Indian female filmmaker to compete for the coveted Palme d’Or.

The story of All We Imagine as Light focuses on two nurses, Prabha (a charismatic Kani Kusruti) and her younger colleague Anu (a charming Divya Prabha). They work in the same shabby clinic and share a small apartment in Mumbai. Moreover, they are both troubled by their relationships. Prabha’s mysterious husband works in Germany and his presence is suggested first by a rice cooker, a surprise gift delivered to the women’s apartment. We realise that Prabha and her husband barely communicate and their bond is fraught and fragile.

Meanwhile, Anu is secretly dating a young Muslim man called Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon). The girl’s family is Hindu and they would never approve their relationship. The two youngsters fight for privacy and intimacy, which are hard to find in a congested megalopolis such as Mumbai.

One of the first turning points takes place when their Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam, an old widow who works with Prabha and Anu) is being cruelly forced out of her home by ruthless property developers. Prabha and Anu will meet her on a road trip to a beach town, an idyllic place where, far from the chaos of Mumbai, they can take stock of their lives and make important decisions.

The dry dialogue and the excellent portrayals given by Kapadia’s talented cast give substance and depth to the film. We discover that Prabha is a rather stiff, disenchanted woman, who seems to passively accept her destiny after her life has been marked by her arranged marriage.

Anu is more carefree, yet fears for her future. Despite the generational clash, they share the same existential discomfort, being surrounded by a society that keeps on judging every their move and struggling to call the huge, alienating place in which they live "home".

Commendably, this engaging narrative is also backed by solid technical work.

The masterful cinematography (courtesy of Ranabir Das) follows the characters very closely, at times delivering a rather claustrophobic social realist feel, at others simply enhancing the emotional impact of the scene.

In one of them, for example, Prabha and one of her colleagues, Manoj, an out-of-town doctor who is struggling to learn Hindi (Azees Nedumangad), are depicted frontally, and barely look at each other. They have a brief exchange, during which they both struggle to share their true feelings. The scene echoes the intensity of Chekhov’s theatre, in which silences and pauses are much more important than words.

Besides, Topshe’s elegant piano score is engrossing and makes this tale memorable and uplifting. Clement Pinteaux’s editing is also spot on, giving the film the right pacing.

All in all, Kapadia’s feature manages to craft a compelling melodrama, which benefits from her documentary background. Her leading characters are endearing enough for a crowd-pleaser, yet realistic and relatable. Striking this particular balance is no easy task and here Kapadia succeeds, delivering probably one of the festival and box office hits of the season.