Bollywood Night
Sister Midnight
Thursday, December 18
Doors at 8pm; movie starts at 8:30pm
Free
To get it out of the way first: we must admit that the film we have selected for the little reprise here of our Bollywood Night series, Sister Midnight (2024, 110 minutes), is not a Bollywood film at all. It is set and was filmed in India; it stars Indian actors who most typically work within the Bollywood system. But it is in fact a British independent film, written and directed by a British-Indian director. It got its premiere at Cannes, after all.
Yet we, frankly, just wanted to watch it ourselves. And so we are allowing the definitions to stretch a little: not Bollywood, but Bollywood-adjacent, surely. Plus, it can perhaps provide a different view on contemporary Indian life and culture than the typical song-and-dance fare. Not better, not “more realistic” (it is by all accounts fairly surreal, if anything), but different.
And what is that view? Of a woman, Uma (Radhika Apte), who finds herself in an unwanted arranged marriage and, in trying (or perhaps not trying) to squeeze herself into that ill-fitting domestic role, slowly (or perhaps not so slowly) unravels. Unable and unwilling to play her part, she becomes ever more chaotic, feral, wild.
We know how she feels.