Sister Midnight is a delectable vampiric dish for anyone into the meaty feminism of Julia Ducournau’s Raw, the visual presentation of Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited and the colourful comedic spices that come with a Mumbai backdrop. Not to mention an eclectic soundtrack that breezes through bluegrass, Motörhead and vintage Cambodian music to enliven the multicultural flavours in this blackly funny debut from British-Indian filmmaker Karan Kandhari.
The story centres on a freshly married pair whose new domestic situation is anything but blissful. Kandhari's script wastes little time setting up the relationship discord between odd couple Uma (Radhika Apte) and Gopal (Ashok Pathak). She's a foul-mouthed bride whose expectations when leaving her rural home to keep house in the city don’t match up to reality. He's a nervous groom who doesn't have the confidence to get changed in the same room as his wife, let alone fulfil the role of a providing husband.
The actors capture Uma and Gopal's uncertain marital dance with aggressive awkwardness as they struggle to find their rhythm – failed sexual encounters, home cooking attempts and newlywed outings included. In contrast, their choreographed comedic timing – diving into bed, sniping over a pack of cigarettes – lend a sense of playfulness. It's especially fun when gestures are precisely timed to various camera shots, including whip pans, perpendicular angles and crash zooms, even as the plot careens into darker territory.
It raucously leans into a woman behaving very, very badly
After being bitten by a bug at a wedding, Uma's health deteriorates and she finds herself preferring night to day and exhibiting bloodthirsty tastes. Jokes about which skin lightening cream Uma uses, because of her sickly complexion, and real talk with her neighbour about marriage, work and domesticity add rich context to the humdrum of working class culture the story takes place in. As do the motionlessness moments of Uma contemplating at home, on rooftops and in the streets of Mumbai. County Lines cinematographer Sverre Sørdal uses light, shadow and vibrant colours to paint a gorgeous portrait of lower caste life.
It's Apte who is the standout, imbuing Uma with a fiery frenetic energy that makes you love and hate her in equal measure. Even when she starts biting animal heads off – with stop motion bringing their corpses to life in whimsical fashion – Apte grounds her erratic actions in the emotional turmoil of a young woman embracing her id. By the final act, Sister Midnight breaks free from the shackles of submissive feminine stereotypes and raucously leans into a woman behaving very, very badly.
In UK cinemas Mar 14.