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The Girls

The Girls

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Summary

A young girl finds herself torn between duty and desire in this stunning Sri Lankan coming-of-age drama by pioneering filmmaker Sumitra Peries.

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IMDB

Review

A star rating of 4 out of 5.

David Parkinson

Sumitra Peries became the first Sri Lankan woman to direct a feature film with this adaptation of an acclaimed 1966 novel by Karunasena Jayalath. She had edited several pictures for husband Lester James Peries, the "father of Sinhala Cinema", who acted as producer here. But Peries imposed her own themes and style on a story that explores the lot of South Asian women in a patriarchal society bolstered by class and gender disparity. Kusum (Vasanthi Chathurani) longs to go to university, while older sister Soma (Jenita Samaraweera) dreams of becoming an actress. Nimal (Ajith Jinadasa) falls for Kusum while she is working for his formidable mother, who is too status-conscious to permit the romance. With Soma's life also falling apart, this could easily have descended into sentimental melodrama. But Peries, telling the tale in flashback, maintains an air of restrained realism in revealing both Kusum's fate and the difficulty facing those seeking to challenge entrenched tradition. Plucked from obscurity, the debuting Chathurani gives a touchingly demure performance that established her as one of Sri Lanka's biggest stars, while Peries would go on to direct another eight features before her death in 2016.

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7.3/10

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rolenameDirectorSumitra Peries

Details

Languages

Sinhala

Formats

Black and white

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