Our coverage of the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles continues with what the program notes described as a "colonial noir."
Gorgeous green hills and lush forests provide the scenic backdrop for Santosh Sivan's Before the Rains, a film that looks even better than it plays. There's nothing particularly wrong with the narrative drama that unfolds, but it proceeds at such a stately pace that it becomes overripe in the telling.
The premise could be summed up easily: a married British plantation owner in 1937 India has an affair with a local married woman who is a member of his household staff. Tragedy ensues. The "noir" aspect figures in because the plantation owner's right-hand man appears to be such a loyal patsy that surely he must become the fall guy.
The film's redeeming feature is its locale and time period.
Colonial India in the late 1930s was a slow-boiling hotbed of protest against British rule, but this hasn't really registered with British plantation owner Henry Moores (Linus Roache). He blithely carries on an affair with his married servant Sajani (Nandita Das) and imagines that he gets along well with his right-hand man, T.K. (Rahul Bose). But both relationships are one-sided. He enlists T.K.'s help in determining where a new private road will be constructed and loftily tells him he will name the road after him, and then just as casually orders him to drive Sajani home.
Sajani is desperate and foolish enough to think that Henry actually loves her, but the affair is cut short as soon as Henry's wife (Jennifer Ehle) and son Peter (Leopold Benedict) return from England. Sajani suffers abuse from her brutish husband and wants nothing more than for Henry to keep his promises to her. Instead, he sends her away and doesn't even have the courage to tell her face to face. Sajani refuses to accept Henry's rejection, and the aforementioned tragedy quickly follows.
Before the Rains is clear-cut in blaming the British for long outstaying their welcome. Henry is meant to be the perfect representation of the British Empire, thinking only of himself. He is all too ready to sell out both friends and lovers for the sake of self-preservation; if possible, he's prefer to simply stand by and let others take the blame for his wrongful actions.
T.K. lives a live of moral compromise. His father sent him away to be educated at British schools, and so T.K. sees the many advantages made possible by the British. He chooses to turn a blind eye to Henry's less honorable conduct, and ultimately is moored between the village where he was raised -- and where his friends and family remain -- and the plantation that holds the promise of further civilized advances.
The film presents historical scenes of peaceful civil disobedience, road building through the forest, and village life, but too often it feels like the pages of a pretty pictorial are being turned. Sivan, who also served as cinematographer, fills every frame with beautiful visuals; if only he was able to bring more life to the proceedings, the film as a whole might have been more galvanizing.
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