When Mira came home on vacation two weeks back, her demands included watching two Malayalam movies in theatre - Sookshmadarshini & All we imagine as Light.
The first was another comeback (she doesn't like the term) film of Nasriya Fahad after Koode and Trance, and with all the trappings of her cute and poke-your-nose-in-others-affairs self from Om Shanti Oshana. It was partly fine but her over-the-top detective ways wasnt entirely convincing and had the kiddishness of a Famous Five or Secret Seven adventure. Three neighbourhood Nancy Drews join in to unearth strange happenings in a new neighbour's house, and honour killings are not what we are used to in Kerala, so that makes for some novelty. But the movie was interminably long for post-Covid times and I was squirming in my seat after 90 minutes. Popcorns and nachos kept my kids busy part of the time.
We managed to catch AWIAL on the last day of its screening at the nearest VOX theatre's VIP screen. Since it is not the kind that enlists much viewers here, it was shunted to the limited seat screen. On a Wednesday (movies change here on Thursdays), there were just five of us in the theatre -- apart from the two of us, there was a lady who was probably non-Malloo and a man who walked up to the last row with a bag of snacks, and another guy who just didnt seem the type for a hi-funda movie like this. We suspected he was drawn to the movie by the nude scenes that it reportedly had. Unfortunately for him, they were censored and we didnt see anything beyond some smooching.
AWIAL, directed by a non Keralite with some French and Dutch collaboration, seemed made for awards and it had already bagged some. By depicting Bombay in all its starkness and roughness, it managed to show India in truly dirty and unappealing colours as the Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire. Two nurses from Kerala - one the head nurse and the other a fresher - share a room; one is dark and quiet and the other is pretty and voluptuous. The first has lost her husband - he has been missing or his whereabouts are unknown ever since he departed to his workplace in Germany where he is working in a factory, or that is what he made her believe (By the way, it would have been convincing if the husband was a blue-collar worker in the Gulf; I havent heard of Keralite men going to Germany for low-level factory jobs). The second has found new love - one expects this will turn out to be a 'love jihad' or a jilted case. But the chap seems earnest and is hoping her family will accept their love.
While the first half (we were warned there would be no intermission, so Mira ran to get a bag of popcorns) showed life in Bombay, the second shifted to coastal Ratnagiri where the teaseller at the hospital where the nurses work -- played by the gritty Chaya Kadam -- shifts after she is ousted from her Bombay shack by landsharks. The young women accompany her, and the boyfriend joins his love interest. We see the women dancing over a bottle of booze, and the trio and boyfriend are peacefully enjoying each other's company as the titles roll. We also see the missing husband -- or was the nurse hallucinating that the man she nurses is her man?
The movie is slow as award movies are meant to be. I didnt understand the end. Did the director not know how to end it or was it meant to be incomplete? Or were the old accepting the ways of the young?
All We Imagine as Light did remind me of my days in Delhi sharing a room with a classmate who had a string of beaus and often didnt pay her share of the rent. The title is a play on the name of the main character Prabha which means light or brightness in Malayalam. But what is light in the lives of the women it portrays?
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