From the moment the movie begins, on a warm night during monsoon season in Mumbai, the writer and director, Payal Kapadia, evokes heat and moisture with extraordinary sensual power, and in a cascade of richly atmospheric details: a man's sweat-stained shirt; outdoor fans whirring above a slow-moving throng; a welcome breeze pouring in through the windows of a rattling commuter train.
Both women moved to Mumbai from the southern state of Kerala, and, even from afar, they remain beholden to their families' rigidly traditional expectations of womanhood.
Anu is sweet, open, and gregarious, as unembarrassed to flirt with a colleague as she is to coo fondly over her pet cat. Prabha is older and sterner, and she surveys Anu's flights of irresponsibility with both exasperation and affection.
In the film's most revelatory moments, Prabha's sad-eyed wisdom and Anu's unconstrained joy don't clash; they harmonize.
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