CW: Spoilers ahead for the movie All We Imagine as Light (2024), but it’s really not a plot-driven movie, so don’t let that deter you too much.

I.

The first I’d heard of the movie All We Imagine as Light, which won the 2024 Grand Prix at Cannes, as I was scrolling on Instagram. ‘I hate titles like this,’ I texted my friend. Stuff like:

The Colours We Left Behind
Beneath the Trembling Stars
Across the Horizon We Wander
The Ocean We Call Home
While Time Holds Its Breath

None of these titles actually exist – ChatGPT made them – but they sound like they do. Because I was in a mood, I kept ranting: Is this what Indian artists have to do to win awards – create toothless, dreamy, non-confrontational ‘art’ with all the nuance of a screen saver? Is is the Indian edition of what Percival Everett skewers in Erasure?

Then I actually watched the movie – after arriving at the theatre extremely hungry. Mercury had just gone into retrograde, so naturally, the cafe queue was too long. I tried and failed to exchange my ticket for a later showtime, and went in shortly after the movie started. In my head I grumbled something about how the interior architecture of the BFI theatre was all wrong, no legroom whatsoever. Everyone seated in my row had to stand up to let me go through, which blocked off the subtitles, and I felt their ire. This better be worth it, I thought.

II.

It was! I loved it!

The story centres on three women of different generations who work at the same hospital doing different roles; a nurse, a receptionist, and a dishwasher. Two of them are roommates, and two of them are friends. The character at the centre of this Venn diagram is Prabha, a Capricorn if I ever saw one. Not because she’s busy climbing up the corporate ladder or whatever, but because of the way she unflinchingly tells the trainee nurses to suck it up and get used to the nasty smell of the placenta being passed around.

There’s another scene where she is walking to the train with a man who is courting her. He’s wearing a translucent pink rain poncho that has a top half as well as pants that go over his regular trousers. At one point he reaches for a small notebook of poetry he wrote her, pulling down his poncho trousers to reach the pocket of his actual trousers. The look on her face!

Later we learn that he’s not just some guy but a doctor, and this adds a fascinating layer. Prabha’s husband has been absent for several years (as the trailer shows); this two-piece pink poncho-wearing doctor is, in effect, a sort of knight in shining armour. The movie hinges on Prabha’s decision – do I choose love or not? It seems like a no brainer, especially since Prabha doesn’t seem to have any family left that she’s beholden to, but this is a duty-bound Capricorn who has built her life around the absence of love.1 She has everything to lose, even if it seems like she has nothing.

The other characters – one of whom is older, and one of whom is younger – grapple with the same ‘should I stay or should I go’ question, but in different contexts: forbidden love and real estate. (This intensifies Prabha’s conundrum, because the only friends she has are drifting away from her.) The younger woman carries on a relationship with a Muslim man while her family pelts her with profiles of eligible Hindus. The older woman is being kicked out of her home of 22 years by a real estate company that wants to build an apartment tower on that land. Her husband forgot to leave her the paperwork that would entitle her to compensation.

One of the reasons I hesitated to watch this movie was because I was afraid it would show scenes of men being cruel to women, in order to make Western audience members feel better about themselves; ‘look at these barbaric Indians’ etc. But All We Imagine Is Light focuses on indifference rather than overt cruelty – a family’s indifference to a daughter’s heart, a husband’s indifference to his wife, a city’s indifference to its inhabitants. How does a person – these three women, in particular – live within a system that renders them invisible?

III.

I love this card so much. Biddy Tarot likens it to the Sex and the City foursome – each friend celebrating their unique contribution to the group – but if you take gender out of it, it’s about creating a warm, encircled atmosphere where fear, anxiety, and sadness are OOO. (To me, at least.) I think it’s less about coping with all the bad stuff with the balm of friendship, and more about leaving it outside, just for tonight – like shoes left at the threshold of a house with a ‘no shoes indoors’ policy.2 To me it’s not about affirming or ‘holding space’ or whatever, but about having a blast, not at a bar or a club where there’s all this potential for adventure, but in an enclosed space, somebody’s house. You’re wearing sweatpants and ordering in Chinese food. Saying whatever ludicrous thing comes to your mind because you know your friends aren’t going to judge you for it. You do not have to perform here. You do not have to dwell on the 1000 pain points of your life. It’s not that you have to try and suppress them out of fear it will ruin the vibe. You just… don’t feel like thinking or talking about it. Because in this moment you are happy, even if the world outside the window is burning. You are aware it’s burning, but you know there’s nothing you can do about it right now, so you take the night off worrying and let yourself have a good time. That’s 3 of Cups energy.

The perfect encapsulation of this energy, in my life, was New Years Eve 2020-2021. A new lockdown had just been announced. That morning my flatmate and I waited on a queue at the fishmongers that stretched from Broadway Market to Mare Street (long). We were not the only ones with the great idea to enjoy oysters and Champagne at home, apparently. The guy behind us on the queue had a strange vibe about him that we couldn’t put our finger on. We opined that it might have been because his gloves, which had some sort of elasticated band under them, were the hanging off his wrists as he texted. That night our friend came over. We watched an episode of Mr. Bean where he tries to brush his teeth while driving to work. The end credits showed it was written by Richard Curtis, the man who also wrote Notting Hill and Love Actually. This was hilarious to us. At some point in the night we ventured outside, to an off-license with luridly bright chips bags everywhere called ELEGANT. It seemed like we’d walked across the Alps to get there, but my step tracker showed it was like 2000 steps. Later we did some sort of pretend catwalk and decided that everyone in life was a method actor, method acting their own life.

The last scene of All We Imagine as Light – 3 of Cups energy all the way – will stay with me for a long time. Though it does not have just three people, or just women, it is like one giant exhale, all the main characters just being present in one another’s lives, being welcome. In this fleeting moment, everything is okay. Nice, in fact. Joyful.