Headstrong, self-possessed women are prime subjects for tales of self-discovery, and that’s especially true for Uma (Radhika Apte), the unforgettable lead of Sister Midnight. The off-beat coming-of-age movie directed by first-time feature filmmaker Karan Kandhari begins with an arranged marriage, pairing the hyper-independent Uma up with a childhood acquaintance who’s her exact opposite in temperament. After their wedding, she’s trapped in more ways than one: far from the ideal housewife, she has few domestic skills to recommend her. And while her new husband (Ashok Pathak) spends his days and nights at work and the bar, Uma can do little else but sulk around their tiny single room in Mumbai, or wander the streets searching for a vocation of her own. Her new life is defined by boredom — until one day, her complex emotions come bubbling to the surface, manifesting in the kind of appetite that borders on the supernatural.
Sister Midnight is a difficult film to define, if only because it carries its lead so brashly from one genre to the next. At turns, it reads like a lo-fi vampire origin story — at others, it’s the kind of slow-burning domestic drama that’s gone extinct on the big screen. It’s all wrapped in a darkly comedic bow, punctuated with the kind of physical comedy that daunted Radhika Apte from the very beginning.
