She’s “mad,” quite mad — articulate, but unfiltered, with few acquired life skills and few options and “Taming of the Shrew” furious over that.
He’s the village or neighborhood “idiot,” who “got turned down” by every possible bride he asked, other than her. Or her family, which was sure to be relieved in getting rid of her.
With the simplest tasks like meal prep, sobriety, marital consummation and managing a budget beyond them, can this marriage be saved? Or, when the stop-motion-animated zombie goats and birds arrive, can it even be survived?
“Sister Midnight” is a gleefully dark and twisted Indian domestic comedy, a deadpan absurdist farce with witchcraft whisked in to the domestic disharmony of it all, a Mumbai story set to the music of Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Holly, The Stooges and…Marty Robbins?
Radhika Apte (“Mrs. Undercover”) is Uma, who rides the train into the city with the husband she hasn’t seen since they were eight, seemingly resigned to her fate living in a street-level one-room hovel and an arranged marriage that might have been the best either her family, or Gopal’s (Ashok Pathak) could manage.
But when disrobes and he bolts, only to return drunk much later, she ducks out herself.
Uma is not your average Indian bride. She smokes like a chimney and curses like Robert Carlyle in “Trainspotting.”
She can’t cook, so her neighbor (Chhaya Kadam) gives her a lesson and one hard and fast rule.
“Throw in enough chili and salt and they’ll eat anything,” (in Hindu with English subtitles).
She can’t manage money and can’t hold her tongue when her new husband — who would rather drink than consummate the marriage — is dismayed at all she cannot do.
“I can’t figure out if you’re just dumb, or just that selfish!”
But as she storms out for a smoke or an idea, she wanders far enough to get a job at a shipping company across town. Can she at least clean the offices, after hours?
“Oh sure. I’m a domestic GODDESS.”
With the help of that neighbor, Sheetal, who becomes her co-conspirator, and of the older and helpful but inscrutable elevator operator (Subhash Chandra) at work, perhaps Uma can make a go of this adult life/married living thing.
But that’s the thing about madness in the movies. It comes and goes, but never really “goes.”
The edgiest Indian cinema has always been filmed by expats, and the London-based Karan Kadhari seasons his debut feature with the sorts of things Indian cinema avoids — nudity, sex, dismemberment and profanity included.
This working poor world is something you survive and resign yourself to. Financial or social advancement never cross anyone’s mind.
A running gag — strangers on the street and even prostitutes stop Uma and ask her for her “whitening” regimen (Snow Queen Whitening Cream, she never ever tells them). But in Uma’s deranged mind, there may be other reasons she’s “Twilight” pale.
Apte is an amusing fury in this role, occasionally even inviting sympathy as she struggles to fit in to a world more tolerant of her fairer skin than her mental state and personal struggles.
Kandhari’s script makes her an untameable “shrew” whose madness can only be managed in a marriage that can only be endured unless coming to an “understanding,” or fate intervenes.
“Sister Midnight” is barely characterizable as a dark farce, challenging to get into until you learn to surf its loopy “Just go with it” vibe. But the deadpan laughs land, from Uma’s endless dismay at her plight to every wholly unexpected needle drop on the score — from The Band to T-Rex. And Apte is the riveting center of it all, making sense out of nonsense, and when she can’t, just bluffing and bullying her unfiltered way towards enlightenment, or something just short of it.
Rating: unrated, violence, sex, nudity, smoking
Cast: Radhika Apte, Ashok Pathak, Subhash Chandra and Chhaya Kadam
Credits: Scripted and directed by Karan Kandhari. A Magnolia/Magnet release.
Running time: 1:47
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