Akasa Kusum Prasanna Vithanage, director * Malini Fonseka

[Darshana]

   I can't recommend this one highly enough - if you have a chance to see it it's likely to be at a film festival, though I think it might find an audience in an arthouse release as it is such a good movie.

   What I love about it is, it is a story about a woman past middle age, and it is completely compelling without being at all melodramatic or pitying of the woman.  Sandhya, played by Malini Fonseka, herself an actual former star of mainstream Sri Lankan cinema, is a retired cinema star living a quiet life and making ends meet -- as well as forming a wonderful and loving friendship - by letting a young TV actress use an extra room in which to meet a man who is not her husband.

    By chance Sandhya is invited for a "stars of yesteryear" TV appearance - one of the loveliest scenes in the movie is her review of her modest wardrobe, and staying up one night to sew a pretty border on a sari to wear on the program.  As a result of the appearance,  someone from her long-buried past comes back into her life in a way that causes ever-deepening disruption.

  It is such an intelligent, multi-layered, well-paced story - I won't go into the other characters much in order to leave the surprises in place, but we see some clips of Malini's old film appearances, and before the movie is over we get more than a glimpse of the underside of Sri Lanka life from the point of view of the women and girls who work and dance in clubs and the like.   It's almost all about relationships among women, too.

  I would have thought a woman had written it, as they are portrayed so well , the women have real friendships, and the details of their lives are so well-observed -- but I was wrong!  Prasanna Vithanage, the director, a man, is related by marriage to Malini, and some of the story is based on some of her own life story.
 

 

[Darshana]

Baradwaj Rangan just interviewed the director at a film festival in Goa:

http://help.aol.com/help/supportcentral/supportcentral.do?id=m1

[Andromache]

Sounds excellent. I'll seek this one out, definitely. 

[Darshana]

Here is a trailer. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duf-FeQ001A

[Darshana]

This is going to be in a festival in Granada, Spain, June 13-20.

http://www.bollywhat-forum.com/index.php?topic=26038.0