Headstrong, self-possessed women are prime subjects for tales of self-discovery, and that’s especially true for Uma (Radhika Apte), the unforgettable lead of Sister Midnight. The off-beat coming-of-age movie directed by first-time feature filmmaker Karan Kandhari begins with an arranged marriage, pairing the hyper-independent Uma up with a childhood acquaintance who’s her exact opposite in temperament. After their wedding, she’s trapped in more ways than one: far from the ideal housewife, she has few domestic skills to recommend her. And while her new husband (Ashok Pathak) spends his days and nights at work and the bar, Uma can do little else but sulk around their tiny single room in Mumbai, or wander the streets searching for a vocation of her own. Her new life is defined by boredom — until one day, her complex emotions come bubbling to the surface, manifesting in the kind of appetite that borders on the supernatural.
Sister Midnight is a difficult film to define, if only because it carries its lead so brashly from one genre to the next. At turns, it reads like a lo-fi vampire origin story — at others, it’s the kind of slow-burning domestic drama that’s gone extinct on the big screen. It’s all wrapped in a darkly comedic bow, punctuated with the kind of physical comedy that daunted Radhika Apte from the very beginning.
“To be honest with you, I didn’t have confidence that I could do comedy well,” Apte tells Inverse over Zoom. “I’ve done so many years of very serious roles that I was actually petrified, because comedy is really hard. You can’t be saved.”
Not unlike Uma, though, Apte is not the kind of heroine who needs saving at all. She’s earned generous praise for her turn in Sister Midnight. It’s a performance that embraces every genre Kandhari throws at the screen, keeping audiences invested in this ever-shifting, delightfully ambitious fable. For all her doubts, it’s a film that Apte knew she needed to be a part of, if only for the message Kandhari wanted to broadcast with it. As Sister Midnight hits theaters, Apte sat down with Inverse to unpack the film’s supernatural themes, the pressures of the patriarchy, and the limits inherent in the traditional “vampire story.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What first drew you to this role? Was there anything that surprised you about the project?
There are three things I can just certainly think of. One was that I thought that [director] Karan [Kandhari] had a very, very distinct voice that I hadn’t seen before or read before. Secondly, I thought that the film was crazy. It was so crazy that if it was made exactly the way he wanted it to be made, it’d be brilliant — and if it goes slightly off, it’ll be disastrous. That’s a great risk to take, because not many pieces you get offered that are so out there. And thirdly, I thought it was an incredible part to play because Uma has a crazy arc. It has so many nuances… It’s a very progressive film, I think. It’s a very egalitarian, very feminist film. I said yes right after reading it once.
Our story begins with an arranged marriage. I’m curious if you faced the same pressure to get hitched as Uma does.
Yeah, once. I come from a small town — or it used to be a small town, now it’s a huge metropolis. And my mom’s a very progressive doctor, and she’s done all whatever she wanted in her life. But I think she just came under peer pressure or something. I don’t know what it was... I was so young. I must’ve been 23, 24... And one day she just came and said, “There’s this doctor whose son is a bird specialist...” and I was quite dramatic because I have a tendency to blow everything out of proportion. I was like, “I just feel betrayed by you, and I just feel like someone just pulled the rug from under my feet, and how could you betray me like this?” I just basically went on a very, very dramatic... Mom was like, “If this is your behavior, no one’s going to marry you.” And I said, “I’d rather not marry anybody who can’t tolerate this behavior anyway.”
The film’s been touted as a feminist fable and as a quasi-vampire film. I'd love to know how you would describe the supernatural elements in this film, like how Uma’s thirst for blood brings out what she’s feeling inside.
It’s quite relevant in today’s time, isn’t it? Because people are so afraid of their uniqueness and they just want to merge with everybody else and look like everybody else... You want to fit into some weird commonality, some definition of everything. And so if you’re a little different, you’re just outcast. [Sister Midnight] is about a sort of girl who becomes an outcast and then becomes an outlaw accidentally. She doesn’t know who she is, and then she becomes somebody — and it’s really hard to accept, but it’s her journey to accept that, to own that. It’s her journey to say “f**k off” to the world who wouldn’t accept her.
For me, the whole thirst for blood is more about how weird can it get. Anything can happen, but she’s like, “OK, I’m this person, fine. Today, now I’m this person... this is me, OK.” Then she meets other outcasts, and they come together. So it’s a story of her accepting herself and really celebrating that more than the thirst for blood, which is why I think I don’t call it a vampire story. Because it’s not really that for me, and which is why it’s a more feminist fable. It’s more about her fighting for her rights and her fighting for her existence.
You mentioned Uma bonding with the outcasts in her city — and that’s one of my favorite aspects of the film, because it brings this sudden softness out of her. Through that sisterhood, the film becomes about more than her rage.
Rage is a very essential emotion, and we need rage because rage means you accept that there’s something wrong. You admit that there’s something wrong... But it can also make you weaker. And so I think love has to conquer that, and I think that’s the entry. There’s this one shot where Uma is sat on that tree [with a group of] transgender women, and one comes and shows her a big sketch that she’s made of her, and Uma suddenly smiles. That’s the first time you actually see her smile like that in the whole film. And I actually felt so emotional that day... I really thought that was such a beautiful shot. And I mean, Uma’s husband is so adorable in a way that also [makes this] a romantic film. His acceptance of her and her acceptance of him sort of conquers the whole rage issue. That love has to come and come and finally stay, and not rage.
