Great work by the whole cast; definitely a character piece, and set against a lovely backdrop. Hattie Morahan is luminous at times in this coming-of-age story about a fifteen-year-old English girl in India, and Naveen Andrews does a great job playing a handsome, self-absorbed poet.
2 Reviews
Interesting film with a cop-out ending
jdoyle3000022 January 2022
Warning: Spoilers
I found this movie to be interesting and well-acted. The characters were well-rounded and showed development over time (although the character of the younger sister Hal was a bit neglected). I don't know if it is realistic or not, but the exploration of relationships in post-colonial India is a good topic for film. I enjoyed the film up to the very end when a "convenient" miscarriage deflated the plot by solving a huge problem for Una and depriving the viewer of a chance to see how her relationship with her family might really have played out. What could have been a really complex exploration of race, sex, class, and colonialism lost a whole dimension that it should have had. I haven't read the book; I assume the film just follows the novel. It left me feeling like somebody just got tired of working it all out and decided to end the plot the easy way.
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