Tags: blog, film, drama, essential, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday March 29th, 2026
Nurse Prabha
I almost get the feeling that this film is having a bit of a laugh with the traditional structure of film dramas. The stories of the three Mumbai women who we follow are Hollywood staples. The cook who's being evicted from her long-term home to make way for gentrifying property developers. The nurse who's fallen in love with a boy from the wrong family.
By the time we get to the teacher who meets an unconscious man who suffers from amnesia and gets mistaken for his wife, it's difficult not to imagine the director smiling at us as we get a magical realist take on While You Were Sleeping only kind of in reverse.
It's difficult to explain. The tone here is gentle and unhurried. The film isn't interested in resolutions or answers. Where just here to feel their lives for a little while.
What the film is interested in is Mumbai itself. I could write some cliche's about the hustle 'n' bustle of the big city but that wouldn't be right. Every scene is packed with detail, both visually and audibly. There's so much to drink in that it almost drowns you in the city itself.
But not much actually happens. There's always people going somewhere, waiting for something, talking to someone, but not much actually going on. Everything moves, all the time, and yet in the moment-to-moment, nothing changes.
I felt exhausted in the effort required to even exist in a place like this. The effort to stay afloat.
Later, when the scenery changes for the Indian coastal country side, the intensity remains. The sound of the country is as constant and intricate as that of the city. The colour palette shifts from cool blue to earth green and brown but it's still dense with detail.
But now there's space and time. Space for the characters to exist as themselves, time for them to be seen by the others for who they are. Suddenly, we're floating, drifting even.
The writer/director Payal Kapadia has crafted something truly captivating and distinct here and I'm looking forward to more of her work.
