Starring: Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam, Hridhu Haroon
Distributor: Rialto Distribution
Runtime: 118 mins. Reviewed in Jan 2025
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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In Mumbai, Nurse Prabha’s routine is troubled when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Her younger roommate, Anu, tries in vain to find a spot in the city to be intimate with her boyfriend.
Towards the end of this moving film, a character speaks about working days on end in a dark factory and the exhilaration of coming out into the light. Light then is symbolic of the realities of our lives but our hopes are that somehow or other we live through and imagine will be light. This is an Indian film which won the Grand Prix at Cannes as well as many other awards and nominations.
The audience is immediately swept into the realities of the city of Mumbai, with the opening tracking shot along a street in the city – observing the people, the shops, the conditions as the camera passes by, and then a long tracking shot along a railway line, the crowds, the stations, the train rides – and some voice-over about people who have had hard experiences in the city.
Then, during a train ride, there is a long take of a striking woman traveller. She is Prabha, a middle-aged nurse. Prabha has an arranged marriage but there is little contact with her husband who is in Germany. She shares accommodation with Anu, a much younger woman who is bright and breezy, and secretly seeing a young Muslim man. The other older woman at the hospital is Parvaty. A widow of 20 years, she squats in a building now being taken over for development. The early part of the film offers an opportunity for the audience to see and appreciate each of the women.
The second part of the film has the three women going to Pavarty’s home town, to help her settle back. There are two developments, a revelation about Anu and her relationship with the young man, his following her to the town, the rendezvous in an almost mystic cave. Prabha, observes, upset, wanting to return to Mumbai. The other development is a blend of the real and the surreal/mystical, a drowning man, caught in the net, rescued and revived by Prabha. However, in dialogue with the man, she imagines him as her husband, questioning him, trying to understand – and it is he who makes the quote about the darkness and light.
These events seem to offer the three women some possibilities for peace in their own lives, hope for the future. The writer-director, Kapadia, was born in Mumbai and brings a deeply empathetic talent to this story of the three women.
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