Payal Kapadia is not even 40 years old but she looks even younger. She arrives before a small group of press who are waiting for her after the first showing of her film at the last Cannes festival as if she were one of them. Their arrival contrasts with that of almost any other filmmaker in the contest, surrounded by an eternal entourage. She is happy. It is not for less. The media has put itself at the feet of The light we imaginehis second film after the excellent A night without knowing anything. It was the first Indian film to compete for the Palme d’Or in 30 years.
That would be the beginning of the film’s career, which has been ranked by media such as Sight and Sound as the best of 2024. Kapadia is nominated for the Golden Globes in the categories of Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film. It will not be able to be in the Oscars for Best International Film. In a move that many anticipated, the Indian academy did not choose her film, which is a criticism of the country’s machismo and the situation of women in Mumbai.
It doesn’t matter, because Kapadia is one of the revelations of world cinema this past year (the other, Coralie Fargeat, also left Cannes). A name destined to do great things. The light we imagine is a beautiful, delicate and poetic film that tells the friendship of three women from different generations in the Indian city – where the director lived -, and how the network of care between them is more powerful than the oppressive family that seeks a marriage for them. concerted. All with a blue light that bathes everything until it reaches its dreamlike end.
In that interview he appeared with a badge in support of the festival workers who had announced a strike demanding better conditions. It’s not a coincidence. In his cinema there is a demand for union. Whether from workers or women. The collective as the only way to win. Or at least to challenge power. “Union gives me hope in change, that’s why I support this,” he says, pointing to his badge. For a person like Parvaty’s character, who does not have the resources to fight the system, the union of people, doing things together, gives him strength. And I believe in it, especially being from a country like India, where a very small percentage of people have most of the resources,” he says forcefully.
In his film the city is almost another character, and it is shown in a way that cinema does not usually do. A contradictory city, as beautiful as it is hostile, as chaotic as it is magical. And that was the director’s intention, which is why she sets the story in the monsoon season. The blue light that emanates from her images has a justification, and it is that, as she herself explains, people cover buildings with blue plastic to protect themselves from storms and the humidity that permeates everything.
It is also a metaphor for his own relationship with the city, a city where a storm can make you have to sleep in the office, but which for almost the entire country offers itself as “the city of opportunities, where everyone goes to find work.” That makes it a multicultural melting pot, where all the languages and dialects of the country converge. A city that is also the place where women go to feel a little more free, but that “is still a city where you need a lot of money to live, otherwise they push you to a corner outside the city.”
Women from different generations who also have prejudices towards each other – in Payal Kapadia’s multifaceted view there are not only whites – but whose union makes them, at least, survive. That which is now said under the topic of ‘chosen family’ and that Kapadia explains more deeply by contrasting love with friendship. In the previous press conference, the filmmaker explained that for her love was something “very political,” and she agrees that friendship is also something, but that “it offers more freedom.”
I feel like a lot of times women are pitted against each other because of patriarchy, which gets in the way of female friendship.
Payal Kapadia
— Filmmaker
It is based on her experience, when she went to live alone: “I moved house and lived in a different place, my friends became my family and were the support system I had. They still are. Friendship is a relationship that is not really defined. It’s whatever you and your friend want it to be. You can be the kind of friend who goes with you to the hospital when you’re sick, or the person you see once every ten years, but as if no time has passed. I like that, and that’s why I wanted to make a film about friendship, a support system that surpasses family, because the established family, at least in India, is quite oppressive.”
For Kapadia, her three protagonists are sides of the same coin, or as she says “the same woman in different generations.” “I feel like a lot of times women are pitted against each other because of patriarchy, which gets in the way of female friendship. They make us criticize each other, and I feel like it happens a lot in India, where not all women support each other. “I think it is because of the patriarchy, which is internalized in such a way that it provokes these reactions,” he censures.
The light we imagine It also shows a sex scene that is a rarity in Indian cinema, where the representation of kisses and intimacy are almost non-existent due to the risk of being censored. Kapadia is optimistic in this sense, and believes that there are now more films that dare to do this, especially since the arrival of “platforms like Amazon or Netflix, which are more open to dealing with certain topics and that do not have censorship,” and he puts as an example the Indian version of Elite. For her scene, she highlights the importance of the intimacy coordinator, so that everyone was comfortable, in addition to an “all-female team so that the situation was as conducive as possible for the actors.” A delicacy in the forms that passes through the screen and is noticeable in every shot that Kapadia has directed.
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