All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia, 2024)

Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha) are two Malayali nurses living together in Mumbai. Prabha's husband from an arranged marriage lives in Germany and she hasn't seen him in years. Anu, younger and more idealistic than Prabha, is in love with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), a Muslim man, and they're both worried about how Anu's Hindu family will accept the news. An older coworker Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) is being harassed by her landlord who wants to sell the apartment building in which she resides to real estate developers. She quits her job in disgust and moves back to her seaside village. Prabha and Anu accompany her on the journey and the change of locale, an explicit contrast to the bustle of Mumbai, winds up rejuvenating for all three women.

Before the New York Film Festival screening Monday night, Kapadia explained that the subtitles would indicate which non-Hindi languages were being spoken throughout the film. It's a perfect illustration of how disorienting Mumbai can appear for anyone trying to navigate their lives in the city, with language a specific story point as some characters profess difficulty with learning Hindi. Kapadia's Mumbai is one where people work long hours and then greet insomnia upon finally getting home. Artificial light dominates as day and night become meaningless distinctions, hence the perhaps utopian promise of the film's title. But as much the "imagine" part of the title as the "light." The seaside locale, itself festooned with a variety of party lights, affords the three principals the time for reflection so much so that the climactic event may be entirely the product of Pradha's imagination. It's a beautifully acted, delicately observed film, one that threatens to get lost between brasher films if not in your own overstimulated memory bank.

Grade: A-minus