From casual sexism and microaggressions to the terrors of domestic abuse, the woes of marital disparity between wives and husbands as a narrative plot device in Hindi films have been portrayed across multiple genres and in varying shades. As the movie begins, you would be forgiven for presuming that director Karan Kandhari’s (“Bye Bye Miss Goodnight,” 2005) sophomore feature “Sister Midnight” bears some thematic familiarity with comedies tackling misfit marriages.

An hour in, and you are prone to realize that this is neither satire nor drama; it’s an expressionist fever dream that bends genres before viewers can grasp what’s happening and just continues to boomerang us till the closing scene, which is when we are finally able to wholly sit with—and ruminate in—this film.

Starring acclaimed actress Radhika Apte (“Monica, O My Darling,” 2022) as the primary protagonist Uma, “Sister Midnight” takes us through her steadily deteriorating married life with the feckless Gopal (Ashok Pathak; “Photograph,” 2019) and the subsequent acceptance of her inner darkness—which is great for her, but dangerous to those who cross her.

Taking a page from Wes Anderson’s film language, Kandhari and cinematographer Sverre Sørdal adhere mostly to placing subjects and objects of momentary importance in the center of the frame, sprinkled with enough of Anderson’s trademarks to remind us of his 2007 comedy-drama “The Darjeeling Limited,” itself photographed with delicious visual flair by award-winning cinematographer Robert Yeoman.

“Sister Midnight” does not take from the “Asteroid City” director’s oeuvre for nothing. Centering Apte in the center of the frame feels like a visual reminder of Uma being thrown into the middle of a chaos she was neither prepared for nor ever wanted. Everything else in the center consists of objects or people she sees or interacts with.

Among those people, three become her good friends: her colleague Sher Singh (Subhash Chandra) the next-door neighbor Sheetal (Chhaya Kadam; “Laapataa Ladies;” Eng. Title: “Lost Ladies,” 2024), and a woman she waves to everyday to and from work that we later know as Aditi (Navya Sawant)—the latter two of whom play a vital part of her life by the end of “Sister Midnight,” which is when things seem to start making lesser and lesser sense.

You’d think that sounds like its Achilles’ Heel, but if you’ve already bought into the drip-feed insanity the narrative aims to be, you’ll be just fine. If not, a number of baffling things that unfold on-screen—birds and goats animated in stop-motion appearing almost abruptly in frame multiple times, a scene of a fictional Japanese film-in-a-film on a random television set in a makeshift café that lingers defiantly long onscreen, or the apparently abrupt revelation in the closing scene that brings the whole film together—will make “Sister Midnight” feel wildly inaccessible to you.

For what it’s worth though, if there is anything that the snap-decision response to Anurag Kashyap’s highly underrated cult psychological thriller “No Smoking” has taught us, it is the fact that some movies are not just made for a single viewing. Kandhari’s film similarly demands and deserves repeat viewings—and considering how it looks and feels, it is not a particularly hard sell. Whether it is Sørdal’s textured framing that unconditionally embraces dramatic contrast, a visual rhythm tightly wound by film editor Napoleon Stratogiannakis (“The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry,” 2023), or singer-songwriter Paul Banks’ eclectic soundtrack, “Sister Midnight” boasts the finest in film craft.

Using those strengths, Kandhari’s perfectly crafted image system around his protagonist allows the movie to telegraph some highly consequential plot devices not via expository dialogue, but through seemingly insignificant occurrences you’d easily mistake for atmospheric enhancement or world-building, like a rogue mosquito biting you in a deathly boring wedding. As a positively surprising result of this, its crowning achievement ends up being the power of making the viewer feel like they’re going insane throughout the films’ respective runtimes—one that “Black Swan,” “Perfect Blue,” and “Mulholland Drive” share.

While not as intense as those titles, Karan Kandhari’s sophomore feature is an incorrigibly funny, and audaciously told genre bender that boasts—for lack of a better term—a certain singular je ne sais quoi. Headlined by the powerhouse Radhika Apte, the movie does its darndest to hook you in an often feral tale of an indefatigable woman embracing her inner rage and ruthlessness to break free from social norms. Highly recommended viewing.