Plot

A English spice baron settles in South India during the waning years of the Raj.

Malayalam-speaking T.K. Neelan (Rahul Bose), Rajat (Lal), Manas (Indrajith Sukumaran), and his sister, Sajani (Nandita Das), live in Kalpetta Township in Kerala, India, during the British Raj. As children, they used to play in the woods where Manas and T.K. used to play Bhagwan Shri Ram and Shri Lakshman, respectively, and rescue Sita (Sajani) from Lord Ravan's (Rajat's) clutches. Now the year is 1937, all are grown up, while Manas is a laborer, Sajani is married to Rajat, and T.K. works for his British employer, Henry Moores (Linus Roache), who lives there with his wife, Laura (Jennifer Ehle), and their son, Peter (Leopold Benedict). Sajani is also employed as a maidservant in the Moores household. T.K.'s headmaster asks him to join the freedom movement and ask the British to quit India, but T.K. feels that India has made a lot of progress under the British rule and they should continue with this partnership. His headmaster cautions him that partnership is only between equals, but T.K. disregards this, and it is this attitude that will compel him to re-examine his way of thinking when he finds out that Henry is having a steamy affair with Sajani.—rAjOo (gunwanti@hotmail.com)

Set in 1930s southern India against the backdrop of a growing nationalist movement, Before the Rains is the English language début of Indian director Santosh Sivan. An idealistic young Indian man (Rahul Bose) finds himself torn between his ambitions for the future and his loyalty to the past when people in his village learn of an affair between his British boss (Linus Roache) and a village woman (Nandita Das). Before the Rains is adapted from Red Roofs, the longest of three unrelated stories in the Israeli director Dany Veretes 2002 film, Yellow Asphalt, which explored the collision of modern customs and tribal traditions in contemporary Israel. In that movie a wealthy Jewish farmer who has an affair with his Bedouin housekeeper forces his assistant, a Bedouin tribesman, to initiate drastic damage control once the relationship is detected. With a screenplay by Cathy Rabin, Before the Rains has been to moved to colonial India in 1937. The transition from one culture to another is seamless. Moores, played by Mr. Roache with a cunning charm that masks an authoritarian severity, is carrying on a passionate affair with his housekeeper Sajani (Nandita Das), a beautiful, naïve woman who commutes from the village to work at his nearby ranch. One afternoon they are accidentally spied making love at a waterfall by two young boys from the village, who report seeing Sajani with an unidentified man. When her husband, Rajat (Lal Paul), interrogates her, Sajanis evasive replies drive him into a fury and he savagely beats her, which under tribal law is within his rights. Since Mooress wife, Laura (Jennifer Ehle), has recently arrived from England with their son Peter (Leopold Benedict), Sajani has already become someone to be kept hidden, although Moores still swears he loves her. But when Sajani shows up wounded at his door in the middle of the night, he insists she leave as soon as possible. The next day he hands her money and entrusts her to T. K., who is ordered to make sure that she leaves. Before departing, she asks Moores one last time if he loves her, and after a pause, he coldly answers no. Before the Rains doesnt dawdle in sentimentality. As much as you sympathize with Sajanis hopeless plight she is a pariah with nowhere to go the film is a dispassionate study of how power, when threatened, ruthlessly exercises its prerogatives. For as long as he can get away with it, Moores lies to his wife about the reasons for the escalating turmoil. Nowadays its called stonewalling. The movies most compelling figure is the unfailingly loyal T. K., who is instructed to violate native customs in a desperate cover-up. A stoic, taciturn man who loves his boss too much, he is a lost soul who has foolishly imagined he could keep one foot in the tribal world and the other in the modern. But for all his ability at navigating between the two, T. K. is as naïve in his way as Sajani. The movie is too sophisticated to make Moores an evil caricature. He is simply the embodiment of the kind of power that when endangered reveals its true nature. The serenity and calmness of the locations are charming and the background score is impressive.(updated March27 2009 by swati-verma@hotmail.com)