42/27

Her younger roommate, Anu, tries in vain to find a spot in the city to be intimate with her boyfriend

Line of Events

In Mumbai, Nurse Prabha's routine is troubled when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Director Payal Kapadia and the cast of All We Imagine As Light come together to share the most heartwarming reactions from Cannes and so much more !.

The first Indian film to screen in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 30 years

I really wanted to like this film after hearing so many positive reviews however it falls short of a masterpiece for me and is just another forgettable film that does nothing spectacular .The film is about a Malayali nurse working in Bombay who lives away from her husband, she shares a room with another nurse who has a lover and they both find it hard to find a place. Third story is about an old woman being driven out of the house she lives in.To my dismay the film gives in too much to the cliched tropes to the point of being downright predictable and boring.

In many ways it reminded me of Ishiguro's "Remains of the day"

The protagonist is longing for a connection albeit she guards herself against it, at many points she is the super ego of the film shutting down the despairing cries of others with dictums yet by the end trying to imagine light in the darkness of her loneliness.In that sense, her roommate is her antithesis, she has no inhibitions, she is in love with a Muslim boy and they are looking for a place to make love.Recognize the beaten path of a storyline of a subdued woman, she is shown to be too righteous, almost like a nun, as a matter of fact the background score of the film is taken from a piece composed by an Ethiopian nun. The story of the roommate and her lover really didn't add that much to the story other than working as a filler for sex, I'm personally not a big fan of misplaced nudity and sex in films, it's ;s exploitative in nature and does little to carry the story.The story about the old lady started off as a social commentary on class, and the hidden rules of society, at one point she questions whether she should confront the reality of her existence or get indulged in the illusion like everyone else.

She ends up leaving the city for her hometown

This story goes nowhere and thus it felt underwhelming.All in all, the film doesn't say anything new, it doesn't punch you in the gut like Salaam Bombay, it doesn't make you somber like The Lunchbox however one cannot help but admire Payal Kapadia's craft, I have seen numerous films on Bombay but nothing captures it like the film does but it felt like – specially in the second half of the film – that she was trying very hard to make each story reconcile and come to closure.By no means I'm calling this a bad film, it's crafty and well made but fails to say anything that has not been said before through film.