‘Sister Midnight' Is a Feel-Bad Fable That Liberates Radhika Apte From Bollywood

The Wire

2 days ago

A still from Sister Midnight. Screengrab from video.
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Even though it is widely known, I don't think enough gets written about how much of a nightmare it is to watch a film in its 'purest' form in India. One can overlook the overzealous censors that infantilise the audience with humongous smoking warnings, even for films rated 'A', desecrating the work of any self-respecting filmmaker. Along with that, most ambitious films play in sparsely-populated theatres.
The screening for Karan Kandhari's Sister Midnight that I attended in Bengaluru had about a dozen audience members. I have a feeling I would've enjoyed the film more if I'd seen it in a packed theatre because it has many visual gags, and most of them are spot on. Also, muted cuss words can feel like sensory speed bumps even if one can decipher them by reading the lip movement. I wondered how the British-Indian director reacted to the alterations? But hey, at least the film released, unlike Sandhya Suri's Santosh (2024).
A still from Sister Midnight. Screengrab from video.
Kandhari's film, also produced in the UK, has the irreverence and an energy that no Bollywood film could muster in 2025 (or a film like this couldn't get funding in India right now). Intent on feel-good fables on newly married couples, where the demure bride discovers her agency in the finale (like say, Laapataa Ladies or Mrs), Kandhari's film could be labelled a feel-bad fable.
Offering Radhika Apte the license to be at her most unhinged, especially after being repeatedly let-down by most films and directors, in one clean stroke, Kandhari liberates her from Bollywood. This might be the rare film where the 39-year-old actor's bravery is reciprocated.
Uma (Apte) and Gopal (Ashok Pathak) are a newly-married couple navigating the initial awkwardness of an arranged marriage. The first time we see them, she's concerned about living in a city like Mumbai, while he's asleep. They're dumped in a one-room chawl in one of those back alleys in Bandra/Khar – ones that bustle with hawkers, autorickshaws in the mornings, and become dead silent at night. Gopal isn't the most expressive – on his first day after their marriage, he leaves for work without saying a word. To make matters worse, he comes back home drunk at night, not bothered about how Uma spent the day in this fully alien environment.
A still from Sister Midnight. Screengrab from video.
But it's not just him who is socially not equipped to play the part of 'husband'. If anything, Uma looks even more troubled by this life sentence of domesticity. She can't fathom her responsibility as a wife. Torn between understanding her 'duty' of providing the carnal pleasures of marriage, and fully aware of how completely ill-prepared she is to play the role of a homemaker, Uma suffocates, and then takes defiant strides to find her happiness.
The first hour of Kandhari's film is a sensational study of arranged marriages and their deeply patriarchal nature, as much as about a life in an unforgiving metropolis like Mumbai. Gopal and Uma's chawl never feels like a set; one can almost smell the damp air, feel the heat trapped from the asbestos roofing and taste the humidity. What I found strained to believe in the film is how it shows Uma walking up and down from Khar to Fort everyday, for a job she takes up in a shipping company as a late-night janitor.
Chhaya Kadam – India's resident character actor to showcase a middle-aged woman doling out advice to wet-around-their-ears women – plays Sheetal, the neighbour on the other side of a thin ply that separates her home from Uma and Gopal's. Kadam's wry, matter-of-fact delivery deepens the enigma of Uma's sense of displacement in Mumbai. Smita Tambe, playing Uma's nosy neighbour Reshma, is a delight. She's at the receiving end of Uma's best, most crude line, which is unfortunately muted in the version playing in Indian theatres.
A still from Sister Midnight. Screengrab from video.
I also liked the dynamic Apte and Pathak share on-screen. Uma's profane mouth and utter disregard for household work is balanced by Gopal's quiet fragility. His ignorance is not entirely intentional, some of it is also social awkwardness. He never asks her where she's coming from, holding a bucket and a mop, even though she can't clean their house. He eats out of polythene bags of rice and dal, too polite to confront Uma about why she hasn't cooked him a meal. Even though Uma is the author-backed role in the film, Pathak makes Gopal this luminous being, aware of his less-than-impressive face, so he tries to compensate with his soft, passive presence – never going on to become an obstacle in the path of his abrasive wife.
As Uma, Apte delivers a physical performance for the ages. Saying the darndest of things, while shedding every last inch of vanity (from scratching her bum to projectile vomiting multiple times) – she never tries to lessen the blow of Uma as an anti-heroine. The best compliment I can think of paying Apte and Kandhari is how they never try to mine sympathy for Uma, and yet they also never let her become sub-human (even when the film dives deep into the pit of genre).
It's in the second hour, and the longer Kandhari commits to the absurdity of his chosen genre, that the film begins to seem clueless about where it's headed. The whimsicality of the first hour – especially Paul Banks' score that features classical rock, grunge, blues, wonderfully at odds with bustling Mumbai compositions and its arid outskirts – becomes less novel towards the end. Especially, once we realise Kandhari hasn't quite figured out a way to make it land.
The reflective commentary around Uma-Gopal's dysfunctional marriage – and how some people are simply not cut-out for 'conjugal bliss' – doesn't reach the heights I imagined; the messaging instead becomes garbled. Apte still swings for the fences till the last scene, but the film (with some dodgy VFX) starts to look less than what was initially promised. As it concludes, it's impossible to not admire the storm that is Karan Kandhari's Sister Midnight – even if it leaves behind a whole lot of wreckage in its wake. Such beautiful wreckage.
*Sister Midnight is playing in theatres
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