Before the Rains

Rating: * * *

Verdict: Drama of adultery in 1937 Kerala is ravishingly gorgeous but lacks conviction.

This handsome and earnest melodrama set in southern India in the waning days of the Raj is so European in its perspective that it's surprising the director is an Indian: Santosh Sivan, one of that country's foremost cinematographers, directed the knuckle-whitening 1999 release The Terrorist.

The central character is an Indian too, although the film doesn't always seem to realise it. T.K. Neelan (Bose) is the staunch and loyal foreman of would-be spice baron Henry Moores (Roache). The credits haven't stopped rolling when Moores, who has gone heavily into debt to build a private road, gives T.K. a pistol "as a gift". We can see trouble coming a mile off. And when we discover that sahib is - with memsahib Laura away (Ehle) in England - pursuing a steamy liaison with his maid Sajani (the lustrous Das), we can see roughly what shape it's going to take.

The real drama of the film lies not in where and how that gun is going to go off but in the divided loyalties that T.K., trapped between two cultures, must deal with in the film's final third. There are moments of real drama, but so much of the rest has a muted, made-for-TV feel. The climax lacks power and conviction and the story dribbles to an unresolved ending.

It is a development of one episode in an Israeli film, Yellow Asphalt, about a Bedouin maid discovered in adultery, which perhaps explains why the focus is so unclear in this version. We're never sure who the film's about and Roache, the wettest English actor alive (with the possible exception of his father who plays Ken Barlow on Corrie), is at his most irritatingly saturated. Thanks to Sivan's camerawork it is often jaw-droppingly good-looking - but looks aren't everything.

Peter Calder

Cast: Linus Roache, Rahul Bose, Nandita Das, Jennifer Ehle

Director: Santos Sivan

Running time: 98 mins

Rating: M (medium-level violence) In English and Malayalam with English subtitles