‘Evening is my favourite time of the day” says a character in All We Imagine As Light, as twilight descends on Mumbai – it’s when the city comes alive. In film-maker Payal Kapadia’s feature debut, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes, night-time in the city is shown in loving detail, as we see markets, fluorescently-lit shops, and trains full of women returning from work. Vermeer is famously said to have “painted with light”. The same principle seems to animate every frame of Kapadia’s film, as light delicately bounces around the screen, indicating the film’s interest in illuminating moments of hope as untold secrets lie in the shadows. On two occasions, a phone torch cuts through the dark to reveal words – in a notebook, on a cave wall – professing great love that feels otherwise impossible to say.
The film follows Prabha, Anu, and Parvaty who work as nurses and cooks at a hospital. The sensible Prabha (Kani Kusruti) is being courted by a doctor. She likes him, but she’s married. Though she is estranged from her husband, Prabha feels pressured to remain a loyal wife. Her roommate, the free-spirited Anu (Divya Prabha), is secretly seeing a Muslim man, and their love affair is as tender as it is aware of the politics undermining their match. Would her father approve, he asks, “if I used a Hindu name”? The two women are also helping Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), who is being evicted from her home by developers. A banner across her building shows a city on the march to gentrification: “Class,” it announces, “is a privilege reserved for the privileged!”
