Three years after her first feature film, Toute une nuit sans savoir, which won the Œil d'Or for best documentary at the Cannes Film Festival, Payal Kapadia is back on the Croisette. This time, in official competition , the Indian director presents her first fiction film, All we imagine as light. It's quite an event, since it's the first Indian film in official competition for 30 years - after Shaji N. Karun's Destinée. Payal Kapadia's social work is full of hope and, in an Indian context that remains as patriarchal as ever, gives a voice to three women of different ages and social backgrounds.
A nurse in Mumbai, Prabha(Kani Kusruti) hides her inner turmoil by throwing herself wholeheartedly into her work - although her look of concern deceives no one. Her daily life is turned upside down when she receives a gift from her husband, whom she hasn't seen in years. Meanwhile, Anu(Divya Prabha), her carefree young colleague and roommate, searches in vain for a place in the city to share some privacy with her lover. Accompanied by a friend, Parvaty(Chhaya Kadam), the two women travel to the coastal village of Ratnagiri. There, a rainforest becomes a space of freedom where the three of them can finally express their desires.
Set in a Mumbai filmed at night, in the rain - this gullible, blue city, "city of dreams or illusions" at the height of the monsoon season - Payal Kapadia's film is both dense and ethereal, contemplative and poetic, offering a fine but unequivocal critique of Indian society. Although the mise-en-scene is discreet, highlighted by a lovely textured grain in the image, the message is all the stronger: theemancipation of Indian women is on the march. On the run towards greater freedom, while the train serves as much to link the city's neighborhoods as to lead these women towards their destiny, Payal Kapadia exposes the problems that stem from age-old patriarchy: forced respect for men, forced marriages and the injunctions imposed on Indian women.
So many battles to be fought alongside economic and societal struggles, from the caste system to be overthrown to theunion of workers fighting for more rights; and in the middle of it all, this sorority that turns in on itself, recreating a cocoon of security that tries to protect the next generation by closing its eyes and opening its heart. A portrait of strong women, feminists without needing to say so, that even avoids falling into Manichaeism.
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