Review of Girls – a heartwarming coming-of-age romance is a treasure trove of Sri Lankan television | Video

Here is a gem of South Asian cinema from 1978, written by Sri Lankan director and editor Sumitra Peries. With its stark monochrome look and calm, natural, selfless acting, there is a freshness and warmth to this film. It is often on the edge of melodrama or soap opera, the excessive shooting has a tendency to reduce the faces of the actors, yet The Girls is rather unremarkable. His greatest pain lies in such oppression. We are in a world of desires that we cannot speak out loud. It’s a story that the whole time I was waiting for it would have a happy ending, but that’s what Peries cruelly hides from his audience.

Kusum (Vasanthi Chathurani) is a studious, determined youngster from a poor family who has education in a prestigious school. His father is terminally ill and his mother works hard to make ends meet. She has a difficult and conflicted relationship with her sister Soma (Jenita Samaraweera), who is silly, fast and receives letters from “friends” – boys. Kusum’s heart-wrenching story begins on a whim when she sees a local dignitary, a “financial sector manager”, being welcomed to her village.

Teenage Kusum often visits the house of a rich woman (Chitra Wakishta), whom she is allowed to call “Auntie”, to do laundry and sewing, and this woman’s loving but arrogant son Nimal (Ajith Jinadasa) hangs around the house and around Kusum in particular; he recently declares his love for her. But Auntie explains to Kusum that she wants to marry him to the daughter of a rich rubber farmer, and Kusum sees that there is no question of having an unfaithful love behind her boss’s back.

And just as Kusum’s heart is broken by the terrible weight of her poor poverty, feminine dignity and romantic sorrow, her mother tells her that Soma has been allowed to take part in a beauty contest held in the ballroom of a large hotel, of all things louche. He is successful, and goes to the big city to do modeling and movies, as Kusum is in a depressed state.

The dramatic divide between the sisters’ experiences may not be the same as all that. Soma’s mother can see the financial benefits of beauty pageantry; Auntie can see the economic benefits of that rubber plantation. Money speaks louder than love. A slightly arrogant boy at Kusum’s school criticizes the spread of romance in books and films because it is a drug, a distraction, that destroys the will of the people to oppose the capitalist system. Maybe he’s right – but a man in a man-privileged world is free to say these things. In a gentle, unforced way, The Girls tells an interesting story that defies the magical certainty of Hollywood’s bygone era.