All We Imag­ine as Light – first-look review

Dat­ing in India can often be fraught. There’s a caste sys­tem to con­tend with, broad­er reli­gious seg­re­ga­tion, the watch­ful eyes of your com­mu­ni­ty and, of course, your family’s wish­es, whether it’s an arranged mar­riage they want for you, or sim­ply het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty. In Pay­al Kapadia’s debut fic­tion fea­ture – the first Indi­an film to play in Cannes’ offi­cial com­pe­ti­tion since 1994 – the for­mer is plagu­ing Añu (Divya Prab­ha), a young Mum­baikar who works as a nurse at a local hos­pi­tal. Añu spends her days behind a recep­tion desk, encour­ag­ing vis­i­tors to have their hus­bands get vasec­tomies, tex­ting Shi­az, a boy her par­ents haven’t picked out for her, and play­ing dream­i­ly with var­i­ous items in the office: tak­ing a stetho­scope to lis­ten to the med­ical mod­els and oth­er items in her imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty, as well as her own heart.

In these lan­guid, play­ful scenes, Kapa­dia sets up Añu as a head­strong roman­tic, a foil for her room­mate Prab­ha (Kani Kus­ru­ti) – the head nurse at the hos­pi­tal and the straight man to Añu’s eccen­tric dream­er. Unlike Añu, Prab­ha is mar­ried, and a lit­tle severe. She’s absorbed greater cul­tur­al dog­ma than her younger, more rebel­lious friend, and her ele­vat­ed stand­ing in their work­place means she feels more respon­si­bil­i­ty – and is under more exter­nal pres­sure – to uphold these val­ues. ​“If you behave like a slut, peo­ple won’t respect you,” she tells Añu blunt­ly after rumours about her secret boyfriend begin to echo around the hospital.

Kapadia’s sto­ry reads as time­less for many rea­sons: this blur­ring of well-inten­tioned, cross-gen­er­a­tional advice with a kind of emo­tion­al abuse, the plight of two young star-crossed lovers; and the glow­ing cel­lu­loid feel of each frame. Con­tem­po­rary motifs are sparse, but ref­er­ences to actors like Amitabh Bachchan, brands like Reishunger, and the sight of smart­phones sit­u­ate the film in a recog­nis­able present. The filmmaker’s ren­der­ings of desi girl­hood are sub­tle but pow­er­ful, com­ing through in small details: the claw clips and med­i­cine strips strewn about the apart­ment, tiny tat­toos and even tinier, heart-shaped lin­gerie hard­ware, stolen moments under cov­er of darkness.

Like Kapadia’s fea­ture debut – an inti­mate yet polit­i­cal­ly-charged doc­u­men­tary titled A Night Of Know­ing Noth­ing – her lat­est is set dur­ing the mon­soon sea­son, a choice that bathes each scene of the film’s first act in an all-encom­pass­ing blue, and posi­tions All We Imag­ine As Light as a suc­ces­sor in a long­stand­ing canon of Bol­ly­wood romances. But this is no masala movie. That it is Shiaz’s Mus­lim faith that pos­es a wedge between him and Añu feels hyper-rel­e­vant at a time when the country’s Hin­du nation­al­ist prime min­is­ter is attempt­ing to secure a third con­sec­u­tive term by con­tin­u­al­ly stok­ing Islam­o­pho­bic sen­ti­ment. The film also approach­es an anti-cap­i­tal­ist cri­tique in its sur­vey of Mumbai’s urban sprawl, speak­ing dis­parag­ing­ly of the seem­ing­ly end­less con­struc­tion of new tow­er blocks, and even going as far as hav­ing Prab­ha throw rocks at a lux­u­ry devel­op­ment in Low­er Parel.

As an NRI (non-res­i­dent Indi­an), it is heart­en­ing to see these issues giv­en cin­e­mat­ic air­time, not to men­tion the much-deserved art­house treat­ment of Mumbai’s crowd­ed shopfronts and neon San­skrit signs. The last time I vis­it­ed my fam­i­ly there, we went to see Dil­wale Dul­ha­nia Le Jayenge – a musi­cal romance epic that has screened dai­ly at the Maratha Mandir the­atre ever since its 1995 release and, as I was reli­ably informed, a make­out movie that pro­vides ide­al cov­er for sneaky young lovers. Peer onto the road­side at night and you’ll be able to see any num­ber of kiss­ing cou­ples grab­bing each oth­er just as Añu and Shi­az do. In this way, Kapadia’s film pre­cise­ly cap­tures the real­ism of the par­tic­u­lar roman­tic chaos native to Mum­bai: a warm, heady place where desire, tra­di­tion, shame, and pride are in con­stant nego­ti­a­tion with one another.