India’s first Cannes Grand Prix-winning film in 30 years is a masterclass in the female gaze

Even as tempting theatrical spectacles lure you to Rome and Oz, consider being transported to Mumbai, India, instead, with Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light now in cinemas. India’s first film in 30 years to compete in and win the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, All We Imagine is a poetic love letter to the city and female friendships, and about the sense of loneliness one can feel even in a claustrophobic urban space packed with people.

The women of All We Imagine as Light

In AWIAL, we meet Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha), two Malayali nurses who live together in Mumbai for work. Prabha is the quiet, diligent senior and trains Anu and other junior nurses not to cringe at the sight of a placenta or be shocked that sponging a male patient might give them a hard-on. When a friendly doctor (Azees Nedumangad) tries to woo her with poetry, she gently rejects his advances. Prabha is married to a man she hasn’t talked to in years, as he lives in Germany for work. His only presence in her life arrives one day as a gift from Germany—a pressure cooker. In a quietly impressing scene, Prabha hugs the cooker, as if reaping a semblance of her husband’s fleeting love for her. 

I say reaping because it almost feels like Prabha lives her life not as her own but in the shadow of her husband’s absence, the way he’d want her to. But the excellent Kani Kusruti’s expressive eyes and body language are a window into Prabha’s soul, and the camera draws us close enough to peek in. You see Prabha’s loneliness, how she shrinks into herself, and how much the thought of stepping outside the boundaries she has drawn for herself tempts her. It is also evident in her secret envy of the free-spirited Anu who, unlike Prabha, takes up space for her hopes and dreams. 

A delightful Divya Prabha plays Anu like an emboldened child at the playground who finally gets to be who she wants to be, away from the watchful eyes of her parents. In the true spirit of a modern, sex-positive woman residing in a metropolis, Anu sneaks contraceptives to a woman with three kids. She dates a Muslim boy named Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), even as her parents insist she marry a nice Hindu boy, and her colleagues gossip about her. She secretly meets Shiaz all over Mumbai, their burgeoning passion struggling as they fight for just a minute of privacy. Yet, they try to seize their moments, on busy bus rides, in hidden nooks at parks, and at Shiaz’s home when his family is away.

Prabha and Anu’s older colleague, Parvaty, played by the indomitable Chhaya Kadam, is a cook at the hospital, fighting against her home being taken over and demolished by a builder who plans to construct a high-rise there. When she fails, she decides to quit her job and leave the city for a home no one can take from her. As Prabha and Anu accompany Parvaty to help her settle in her native home in a seaside village in Ratnagiri, the break from the city grants them space, reprieve, and clarity to be their true selves and understand each other.

Payal Kapadia’s piercing female gaze on urban life, female sexuality, love, and loneliness

Even as director Payal Kapadia captures Mumbai in all its flawed beauty, the emotion AWIAL evokes in you is universal. Every metro is a duality; the high-rises and the shanties overlook each other, but local transport and traffic become the great leveler. You can call the city your home and love it; yet there will be days when the loneliness amongst its crowds will hit you like a speeding train, and you’ll long for loving arms around you from family, a friend, or a lover that feel like home.

Kapadia perceives it all through a piercing female gaze that looks beyond the scene and gleans something deeper from the simple and mundane. There’s a casual sensuousness and slow poetry to the people and the landscapes in her film. The cacophony of the city has a rhythm to it; even sweaty bodies with imperfections feel enviable. And most of all, it feels deeply intimate. Cinematographer Ranabir Das captures the subjects with such forgiving softness. The music that plays through the film (Dhritiman Das, Topshe) elevates this feeling beautifully, particularly the piano pieces by Ethiopian composer Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou (who passed away last year) that Kapadia chose to weave into the background.

But my favorite thing about the film is its take on women and their relationships. It ekes out sensuality from normal bodies, and solidarity from female friendships in a world that usually pits them against each other. AWIAL is a classic example of women telling women’s stories with such tact that it could facilitate a catharsis. It’s almost like the soft, nurturing, healing, and non-judgemental touch of a nurse who knows the patient better than the doctor, having spent time with them, anticipating their needs, and treating them like her children.

In two scenes this is particularly evident. The first is when Anu sneaks out of Parvaty’s house to the woods to rendezvous with her lover, who has followed them to Ratnagiri. The two have sex because they’ve finally found some privacy, but unbeknownst to them, Prabha silently watches with a sense of longing. The way the camera moves in tighter and languishes over Anu and Shiaz’s bodies is intimate, sensuous, and empowering but never titillating. Anu is on top, taking control, touching Shiaz’s body in a beautiful and rare depiction of what unbridled female sexuality looks like. 

The other scene arrives later, as a contemplative Prabha saves a drowning man’s (Anand Sami) life. When he is taken to the local doctor’s, she cleans him up, and talks to this stranger as if he were her estranged husband. Through that conversation, which is lit and portrayed as a surreal, reverential experience, Prabha achieves a liberating catharsis.

You know how travel can change you in an almost magical way? You feel that shift in energy when the women journey to Ratnagiri, away from the city they usually call home. In the countryside, the film almost shifts gears into magical realism, where anything is possible. The camera zooms into its subjects, the light shines differently, they breathe freely, and their bodies and minds relax and stretch, offering clarity. 

In its final scene, set in a beautifully lit beachside shack where Parvaty, Prabha, and Anu reunite after their separate adventures, they are renewed and ready to jump back into their real lives. It’s ironic how, despite living in the same house, Prabha and Anu were never really close or shared a moment where they truly talked to each other. Mumbai has beaches too. But away from the city, at this beach in a coastal village in Ratnagiri, they find space and time to open up and finally become friends.

AWIAL may be about one city, but it really is about all who live in urban spaces

After doing the rounds at several international film festivals, All We Imagine as Light was the opening film at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival in October, where I watched it. Its visual language instantly reminded me of the simple poetry of Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, a film I’d caught at the same festival last year. As someone born and raised in Mumbai, Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light understood both my love and frustrations towards the city. At the same time, it exposed me to the emotions of those unlike me, who came to Mumbai with a dream to make it their home and struggle with a similar dichotomy of feelings for it.

Despite being an Indian film and a French production, neither country submitted All We Imagine as Light as their official entry for the Oscars Best International Feature Film category. India picked Laapataa Ladies because the committee believed that All We Imagine felt more like a European film. Sigh! Nevertheless, it is one of the best films of the year and it would be criminal to miss it. It should be watched on the big screen, as the cinema experience will only emphasize its intimate storytelling even more.