{"id":963,"date":"2025-05-14T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/sister-midnight-showcases-profane-star-making-performance\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T13:00:00","slug":"sister-midnight-showcases-profane-star-making-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/sister-midnight-showcases-profane-star-making-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Sister Midnight\u2019 Showcases Profane, Star-making Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/05\/sister-midnight.jpg\" width=\"1290\" height=\"541\" alt=\"Film still from 'Sister Midnight.' (Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing)\"><\/figure>\n<p>If anything, <em>Sister Midnight <\/em>will destroy preconceived notions of arranged marriage on film. From <em>The World of Apu <\/em>(1959) to <em>Monsoon Wedding <\/em>(2001), American audiences have seen Indian brides exist without agency, floating in a strange demure stasis. But not <em>Sister Midnight<\/em>, an offbeat and often profane fantasia that looks to break both social and cinematic conventions.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In a star-making performance, Radhika Apte plays Uma, a woman sent off to be with her new husband in Mumbai, a place that is alien to her. Uma has no friends or family in this swirling metropolis. Her husband, Gopal (Ashok Pathak), lives in a grimy one-room apartment where Uma is confined during the day, expected to cook and clean. Gopal is always at work and comes home drunk late at night. He also has no interest in sex. Life basically sucks for Uma and she\u2019s not happy about it.<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/05\/stephen-thomas-breaking-hearts-single-turns-heartbreak-into-power\/\">Stephen Thomas\u2019 \u201cBreaking Hearts\u201d Single Turns Heartbreak Into Power<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/05\/simple-minds-is-alive-and-kicking\/\">\u00a0Simple Minds is Alive and Kicking<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/05\/oasis-reunion-no-album\/\">Manager: No New Oasis Album Amid Reunion Tour<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Writer-director Karan Kandhari turns Uma\u2019s predicament into a dark comedy, in more ways than one. On a basic level, <em>Sister Midnight <\/em>is a domestic comedy. Uma doesn\u2019t know how to be a housewife. She can\u2019t cook or clean. She is also coarse and loves to swear, something frowned upon by the other women in her orbit. Her sexual frustration is palpable and played for laughs. At one point, she tries to seduce Gopal, but he responds with a handshake.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<lite-youtube videoid=\"yZ5JLN1X3z8\" style=\"bottom: 0; height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; width: 100%; max-width:100%;\"><\/lite-youtube>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>But then something strange happens. Bizarre cravings overtake Uma at night. These vampiric appetites start small\u2014a goat here, a bird there. Soon, Uma is thirsty for human blood. This tonal shift threatens to derail <em>Sister Midnight <\/em>and much of its second half is devoted to the fallout surrounding these impulses including a neighborhood witch hunt that puts Uma in the crosshairs.<\/p>\n<p>This slide towards horror isn\u2019t the only offbeat thing about <em>Sister Midnight. <\/em>Soundtracked by Paul Banks of Interpol fame, songs skid from the Stooges to Howlin\u2019 Wolf to Marty Robbins, off-kilter anachronisms for a film completely in Hindi. Yet, <em>Sister Midnight <\/em>exists to break conventions, break Uma free from the hell of arranged marriage and us from our preconceived notions of what Indian cinema should or shouldn\u2019t be.<\/p>\n<p>If a Western comparison exists for <em>Sister Midnight, <\/em>it could be the films of Aki Kaurism\u00e4ki. Much like in the Finnish director\u2019s work, the characters here exist in a liminal, deadpan state, almost as if in a daze. This flatline existence makes each swear Uma utters even more powerful. She is a woman boxed in by society\u2019s constrictions and she is not happy about it. Hear her curse.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If anything, Sister Midnight will destroy preconceived notions of arranged marriage on film. From The World of Apu (1959) to Monsoon Wedding (2001), American audiences have seen Indian brides exist&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}