Recent times have been a boon for films by or about Indian women. On top of Cannes Grand Prix winner All We Imagine As Light, 2024 also saw the premiere or release of Suchi Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls, Sandhya Suri’s Santosh, and Kiran Rao’s controversial Best International Feature pick Laapataa Ladies. Into that mix comes Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight, an offbeat black comedy partly about the difficulty of being a modern Indian woman.
The woman in question is Uma (Radhika Apte), a newlywed first seen on the train as she makes her way to her husband Gopal’s (Ashok Pathak) home. From the start, Kandhari is perfectly willing to let us sit in the silence of our main characters––until the day begins and both Uma and the viewer are thrown headfirst into the chaos of Mumbai. As a heroine, Uma is rather, shall we say, “difficult.” She’s especially prone to tossing around the Hindi phrase for “motherfucker” and has trouble even figuring out how to make dinner. Her husband’s not much help, either: he barely even seems to know what sex is, instead giving her a handshake on their wedding night. She’s mostly left to wander about the city on her own, occasionally bothering/hanging out with her next-door neighbor Sheetal (Chhaya Kadam, from All We Imagine As Light and Laapta Ladies).
Sister Midnight unfolds with a particularly deadpan style in both humor and performance. Kandhari favors simple gags, like the aforementioned handshake or a bit where Uma flees from the beach after being stuck between two sobbing people on either side of her. Apte largely rolls with the punches; when she’s not cursing she’s observing, or making sarcastic observations in-between something of a more unhinged behavior. (An overheard bit of dialogue at a different wedding mentions that her marriage was more an act of convenience, with her being a psycho and him being mostly feckless.) Combined with Kandhari’s studied compositions––especially in the dark––it makes for a rather amusing time, a novelty of Indian cinema even as you may start to wonder where exactly it’s going with all this.
There are regular hints that something unusual is happening with Uma: her lack of hunger; her complexion growing paler and paler. It’s difficult to discuss where Sister Midnight goes without spoiling the exact nature of the plot, but suffice it to say (even a comparison might be pushing it), given certain posters and loglines, you’ll be waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it does, Kandhari continues on his same lackadaisical pace, breaking out more darkly funny jokes as Uma begins freeing herself more and more from societal expectations. The inevitable reveal puts things into perspective without ever quite making the needed impact. One expects it to be crazier or more out-there, and, to be fair, there’s one very weird little development. But it isn’t quite enough to keep from feeling slightly disappointed, even as things start getting a little more dire for Uma.
At its heart, Sister Midnight is a tale about the rigidity suffered by Indian women––how it can be so easy to brand someone “crazy” when even mildly deviating from the norm. Khandari mostly captures the inherent monotony of being a housewife, even if you’re able to bond with your neighbor through pretending to be divorced. Whatever its easygoing nature, Sister Midnight remains entertaining and visually distinguished, with aid from Interpol’s Paul Banks on the score. It may not fully congeal, but neither does Uma––that’s just life.
Sister Midnight enters a limited release on Friday, May 16.
