Meneka Das, an Indian actress domiciled here, writes and directs as well as stars in this pleasant, lushly shot film about Asha, a young woman living in a small North Indian village. Asha tries to educate herself enough to get to university and falls in love with the handsome son of the local Indian Commissioner, for whose British wife she works.
The settings of what is admittedly a slight though affectionately told tale are superb. The music on the sound-track from Andrew Mackay is appropriately Indian rather than Westernised until a more jarring and obvious theme takes over late in the film, and the acting, particularly from Das and her sister Sheenu (also the film’s producer) as Asha’s best friend, is more than adequate.
Obviously intended to be an elegy to a fast-disappearing India, the story is clearly partly autobiographical; the sisters grew up in Allahabad, where even then the bulldozers of economic liberalisation were destroying the
old life.
If it lacks the power of real drama, or a radical sense of style, it doesn’t stint on the difficulties a peasant girl probably still faces when getting on in life.
Little Box Of Sweets
Cert: NC
