Sinning in the Rains

British dealings in India — from the perspective of the colonized

by Shaun Brady

Merchant Ivory is as reliable (some might say predictable) a brand name as McDonald's or Target, so a film like Before the Rains could be thought of as a franchise opportunity — the trademark promising a product with all of the expected elements, albeit without any hands-on involvement from James Ivory or, obviously, the late Ismail Merchant.

Their names may as well be on the film, however, as they would end up in every review penned about it anyway. Merchant Ivory specializes in romance-novel exotica appealing to middle-agers with liberal leanings and Victorian mores, easily (if giddily) shocked by the scandal of it all. They won't be disappointed by this hothouse blend of interracial and extramarital liaisons, cultural taboos and neocolonialism played out by pretty people sweating in the jungle heat.

The novelty this time around is that the usual tale of British empirical dealings in India is told by one of the colonized rather than the colonizers. Director Santosh Sivan is a longtime Bollywood cinematographer and director of films including The Terrorist and Ashoka the Great. His influence seems more professional than cultural, however, as his cameraman's eye comes to the forefront, his eye-popping, oversaturated colors lending a heightened sensuality lacking in the plodding narrative and apathetic performances.

Linus Roache is especially enervating as Henry Moores, the planter overseeing a spice road through the jungle, employing near-slave labor to hack through the wilds, oblivious to the niceties of local tradition. He's also dallying with his housekeeper Sajani (Nandita Das), a development seen with proper wariness by his English-educated right-hand man T.K. (Rahul Bose).

As the film opens, Moores gifts T.K. a British pistol, pretty much sealing everyone's fate from the get-go. The drama plays out in unsurprising fashion, lent the weight of high opera by Sivan's overheated eye, constantly distracted by the teeming nature enveloping this outpost of civilization.

T.K., of course, stands in for the bridge between the Empire and the traditional culture being lost under the wheels of its progress. When Sajani disappears, the already-brewing anti-British villagers turn more fiercely against Moores and his project, but as T.K. rationally (if ineffectually) understands, the inevitable is already underway. That Sivan meets this inevitably with a shrug perhaps acknowledges the weight of history, but offers little in the way of fresh perspective. It all looks pretty, however, and will set a heart willing to meet it halfway beating in complacent shock.

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

BEFORE THE RAINS

Directed by Santosh Sivan

A Kerala Productions release