The Gorgeous Mumbai Rhapsody of “All We Imagine as Light”

It’s tedious to talk about the weather, but “All We Imagine as Light” compels me to at least attempt an exception. From the moment the movie begins, on a warm night during monsoon season in Mumbai, the writer and director, Payal Kapadia, evokes heat and moisture with extraordinary sensual power, and in a cascade of richly atmospheric details: a man’s sweat-stained shirt; outdoor fans whirring above a slow-moving throng; a welcome breeze pouring in through the windows of a rattling commuter train. Later, the rains will come: when Anu (Divya Prabha), a young hospital nurse, sits on a bench with her boyfriend, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), a sudden downpour drives them away—the latest indignity for two young city dwellers who haven’t had much luck finding privacy.

Anu shares an apartment with Prabha (Kani Kusruti, an actor of piercing presence), who works as a head nurse at the same hospital. Kapadia introduces them separately, not as friends or roommates; by the time we finally see them in cramped quarters, we already sense that they lead determinedly individual lives. Anu is sweet, open, and gregarious, as unembarrassed to flirt with a colleague as she is to coo fondly over her pet cat.



Prabha is older and sterner, and she surveys Anu’s flights of irresponsibility with both exasperation and affection. On paper, the two women might sound like too obvious a study in sisterly contrasts, but the actresses’ beautifully matched performances sidestep such schematics. In the .