After reading review after glowing review of Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine is Light” I had to watch it. I finally did, in the theatre, no less. I say that because Indian films being shown in Ireland is still a rarity, let alone a Malayalam movie.

The film follows the lives of 2 nurses, Prabha and Anu, and a cook, Parvathy, who all work in the same hospital. Prabha is older, experienced, and married. Anu is young and still learning the ropes on the job. She is also flighty and impulsive. Parvathy is battling against developers demolishing her home and has to make a decision whether to stay and continue to fight or leave for somewhere more peaceful.

The people we see here resonate with us deeply. They are like your neighbours next door or that close family friend or one of your aunts. I loved that they were shown with such rawness and depth. Each person has her own inner world teeming with unmet desires and unsaid wishes but they don’t remain unseen or unheard. They shine on the screen through quiet moments. The scene where Prabha’s loneliness is apparent when she hugs the kitchen appliance her husband sent from Germany, for instance.

The pace is slow, sometimes painfully so. Hardly anything happens for minutes at a stretch. There’s just Prabha looking out of the window at the rain or Anu and her boyfriend walking around a market. They don’t need to talk for us to hear what they need to say.

And that’s the beauty of this movie. Their problems and their lives are ordinary and that’s what makes them extraordinary.