In All We Imagine as Light, a nurse in a Mumbai hospital is confronted by the emptiness in her life when she helps a friend move to a seaside village. Set near an upscale Himalayan prep school, Girls Will Be Girls focuses on a mother who toys with her teenage daughter’s boyfriend.
These strikingly dissimilar roles are both played by Kani Kusruti, an award-winning stage and screen performer who’s been appearing onscreen for 20 years. Her work has unusual depth, a core integrity that makes her convincing no matter what class or type she plays.
Internationally, this has been a breakthrough year for Kusruti: Shuchi Talati’s feature-directing debut Girls Will Be Girls won Sundance’s Audience Award and was released this past September in U.S. theaters, while Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light screened at Cannes, where it earned the Grand Prix, and arrives next week in U.S. theaters.
Kusruti was a member of the New Currents jury at this year’s Busan International Film Festival, along with director Mohammad Rasoulof, actor Zhou Dongyu, and Rotterdam festival director Vanja Kaludjercic. We spoke at the festival offices in Busan.
The Film Stage: The roles in these two movies are so different. Do you use the same approach for them in terms of research and rehearsal?
Kani Kusruti: I’m open to different approaches. It depends on the director. Some directors are very clear about what they want––they may not give you a lot of freedom to interpret your character––so I keep an open mind until we meet and have two or three discussions. Then I have an idea of what kind of portrayal they’re looking for, what kind of acting style. If I’ve already formed a rigid approach to a role, it’s going to be difficult for me to unlearn what’s fixed in my mind. Besides, it can be fun to work for someone else’s vision, learn how to be a tool for them.
For Shuchi’s film, I didn’t quite understand Anila. I have a very good relationship with my mother, so when I was reading the script I was thinking, “Why is this woman being this way to her daughter?” But after talking with Shuchi and hearing the way she described Anila, I thought there was something interesting there. Plus it’s great to get to play someone you’ve never seen, someone you don’t know in real life. Shuchi was open to my comments, and when we had a reading with Preeti Panigrahi––who was cast as Mira, Anila’s daughter––I suddenly understood my character.
To go back to your question: I’m not sure if this was a conscious approach to the role. I know Shuchi and I worked with Anila’s physicality. Both Shuchi and Payal wanted me to put on weight, and for Anila I also wore padding, which helped me get into the character.
Could you draw on anything in your own experiences for Anila?
Nothing. It was one of the most challenging characters for me. Later, some friends who watched the film would say things like, “My mother was like that.”
Kani Kusruti at Busan International Film Festival
Anila and Mira have an interesting dynamic. There’s love but also a lot of bitterness and jealousy. And then everything is magnified when it seems that both are attracted to Mira’s classmate, Sri.
At times Anila wants to be the best mother, and at other times she enjoys the attention Sri is giving her. Shuchi said that she doesn’t force a character to be one way or another. Everyone has shades.
So when you’re performing with Preeti, are you manipulating that dynamic?
Shuchi had a very interesting way of directing our scenes. First, we had a lot of women on the crew, so it was one of the quietest sets I’ve ever been on. That quiet was a luxury, because it gave us more time to shoot. Shuchi would shoot a scene exactly like she wrote it in the script. So if Mira was late coming home, I would play it a little angry, upset with her. Then Shuchi would shoot it where I’m not angry, but friendly towards her. Shuchi ended up with so many permutations and combinations to edit with. I was curious to watch the film just to see how my character evolved. Depending on the takes Shuchi chose, it could have been an entirely different movie.
What I love about your acting is watching your eyes as you look at other people. There’s an interior quality to your performance. It’s more than just delivering lines, pretending to be happy or sad. You have scenes in Girls Will Be Girls where you’re staring intently at Mira, but it’s up to the viewer to determine what you’re feeling.
That was Shuchi’s intention, and I think for her film it works pretty well. There are open-ended scenes in Payal’s film as well, but she had much clearer thoughts about what she expected from my performance.
There are moments in All We Imagine as Light where your character Prabha looks pensive, hesitant. What does she want?
I think Prabha is negotiating all the time with what she wants and what society expects. She’s struggling to present herself as a good person to Indian society; she’s always trying to be that good person despite her personal desires.
Prabha is very observant. She sees her roommate, Anu, who’s always getting away with more than society allows. It’s a push-pull situation with her. Payal told me that Prabha is a very good nurse. Very meticulous. Rather than dwelling on herself, she’s thinking about what she has to do on the job the next day. Payal was inspired by a nurse in real life.
Is that what Prabha wants? To be a workaholic?
Prabha is so lonely. She wants what she thinks Indian people have: a partner and a family. She wants to be reunited with her husband. She clearly wants her colleague Dr. Manoj [Azees Nedumangad], but she’s not courageous enough to pursue him. She’s a very conventional character, a woman who wants a job and then a partner and then to have a family. But that didn’t happen in her life––only the job part. In the backstory that Payal and I developed, she doesn’t have much of a relationship with her parents, either. So basically she’s very lonely. She wants some kind of partnership.
There’s a moment when Parvaty, a friend at work, tells her, “You’re better off being alone.” The look on your face is devastating.
That’s a transitional point in the story for Payal: after watching Anu, Prabha is learning to look at life differently. For me, personally, I like Parvaty’s character the most. I can identify with her. With Prabha, I’m like, “Just move on. Get a life.”
It’s a huge step for Prabha to accept Anu’s choices, like her relationship with her boyfriend Shiaz.
That’s why, when I read the script, I was so happy that the film ends in a very positive way for women. To look forward, to be able to evolve, grow, unlearn things. To transcend to the next level. Learn how to accept yourself.
So much of All We Imagine as Light concerns how difficult it is for the characters to move around Mumbai with its crowded trains and buses. As an actor, was it hard to focus in those scenes?
For the bus scenes we used extras. The train scenes we did guerrilla-style. We rehearsed so well before that we could just go and do our dialogue. I’ve worked like that in other films, one where we shot inside a mosque with the camera hidden under a towel.
Somehow I think your concentration is even greater in those scenes; we pay more attention. In that film, in the mosque, I thought the whole crew worked best in uncontrolled situations. Every sense was open, everyone knew exactly what to do. I think those scenes help you to focus.
What do you think the response will be when these films open in India?
Cinephiles will love them. I’m curious about “normal” moviegoers; I can’t predict. India is culturally so different. We have 22 languages and each state has its own culture. In Kerala, where I come from, we have a very strong culture of watching films. So I can imagine Girls Will Be Girls might do very well. The dialogue is mostly in English, which will attract a specific audience––as opposed to Payal’s film, which has Malayalam and Hindi and Marathi dialogue. I think there is a certain amount of interest about All We Imagine as Light because it won in Cannes.
Girls Will Be Girls is now in theaters and All We Imagine as Light opens on November 15.