Before the Rains (2007)
Country: US/IND/GB
Technical: col 98m
Director: Santosh Sivan
Cast: Linus Roache, Rahul Bose, Nandita Das, Jennifer Ehle
Synopsis:
India, 1937: a plantation owner plans to build a road to enhance his trade in tea and spices, but his dreams are irrevocably compromised by a dalliance with his Indian servant girl.
Review:
Unusual for an inter-racial love affair to take place in films set in this period of the British occupation (rumblings of Indian nationalism are also flagged up to ram home the point of exploitation by the English). All the more disappointing, then, to find that it is an unhappy one (like that in Heat and Dust), the hero being just very weak and irresponsible rather than exactly bad. On the face of it, though, he settles in India to exploit it commercially, then causes the death of an Indian girl and abandons his native friend to his fate when he is fingered for the crime: the schematic aims of the screenplay are clear. Roache fails to retain our sympathy as a James Fox broadminded chap for long, but the Indian characters are more interesting. Not much fat on the film either, with nearly every scene counting for something in the working out of this particular tragedy.
Country: US/IND/GB
Technical: col 98m
Director: Santosh Sivan
Cast: Linus Roache, Rahul Bose, Nandita Das, Jennifer Ehle
Synopsis:
India, 1937: a plantation owner plans to build a road to enhance his trade in tea and spices, but his dreams are irrevocably compromised by a dalliance with his Indian servant girl.
Review:
Unusual for an inter-racial love affair to take place in films set in this period of the British occupation (rumblings of Indian nationalism are also flagged up to ram home the point of exploitation by the English). All the more disappointing, then, to find that it is an unhappy one (like that in Heat and Dust), the hero being just very weak and irresponsible rather than exactly bad. On the face of it, though, he settles in India to exploit it commercially, then causes the death of an Indian girl and abandons his native friend to his fate when he is fingered for the crime: the schematic aims of the screenplay are clear. Roache fails to retain our sympathy as a James Fox broadminded chap for long, but the Indian characters are more interesting. Not much fat on the film either, with nearly every scene counting for something in the working out of this particular tragedy.
Country: US/IND/GB
Technical: col 98m
Director: Santosh Sivan
Cast: Linus Roache, Rahul Bose, Nandita Das, Jennifer Ehle
Synopsis:
India, 1937: a plantation owner plans to build a road to enhance his trade in tea and spices, but his dreams are irrevocably compromised by a dalliance with his Indian servant girl.
Review:
Unusual for an inter-racial love affair to take place in films set in this period of the British occupation (rumblings of Indian nationalism are also flagged up to ram home the point of exploitation by the English). All the more disappointing, then, to find that it is an unhappy one (like that in Heat and Dust), the hero being just very weak and irresponsible rather than exactly bad. On the face of it, though, he settles in India to exploit it commercially, then causes the death of an Indian girl and abandons his native friend to his fate when he is fingered for the crime: the schematic aims of the screenplay are clear. Roache fails to retain our sympathy as a James Fox broadminded chap for long, but the Indian characters are more interesting. Not much fat on the film either, with nearly every scene counting for something in the working out of this particular tragedy.