Sinister Calling

Sister Midnight | Director: Karan Kandhari | Cast: Radhika Apte, Chhaya Kadam

WOMEN IN FILMS looking to live their own way, look no further than Chhaya Kadam. Since Nude in 2018, she has played the go-to person for a woman in search of autonomy. It is the same in Sister Midnight, where she is a nutty Radhika Apte’s non-judgemental neigh­bour, the only one in a cheek-by-jowl slum who is concerned about a newbie couple’s weirdness. Apte is Uma, a young bride with a penchant for animals and a life of freedom. Unhappy at being left home alone to deal with the domestic drudgery that is the fate of her kind, she takes a cleaning job, which keeps her busy at night. But not busy enough to keep her away from either her nocturnal engagements with animals or her husband, beautifully played by Ashok Pathak, who complains plain­tively. Director Karan Kandhari deploys a variety of measures, from blank screens to acting as scene transitions to an unusu­al playlist, to add to the wackiness of the proceedings. Embalmed birds, persistent goats, ashes contained in a box marked ‘cookies’, and fat rats. Sister Midnight has rich wildlife and an even richer inner life, as Apte embraces every last scrap of insanity in her soul. This is a performance without vanity but with humour and light­ness, leaving the viewer with a sense of liberty and a dash of derangement. At the end, like Apte, you feel like picking up your belongings and going off on a long jaunt.

Chhaya KadamcinemaentertainmentKaran KandhariRadhika ApteSister Midnight