The Girls review – poignant coming-of-age romance is an understated gem of Sri Lankan cinema

Sumitra Peries’ 1978 film about teenage sisters and thwarted romance is laden with passions that can’t be spoken aloud

Here is a gem of South Asian cinema from 1978, by the Sri Lankan director and editor Sumitra Peries. With its lucid monochrome cinematography and calm, natural, unselfconscious performances, there is a freshness and warmth to this film. It is often on the brink of melodrama or soap opera, many shots having a tendency to slow zoom into the actors’ faces, and yet The Girls is in fact rather understated. A great deal of its poignancy resides in this very suppression of emotion. We are in a world of passions that can’t be spoken aloud. It is a story through whose entire running time I wistfully hoped for a happy ending, but that is what Peries ruthlessly withholds from her audience.

Kusum (Vasanthi Chathurani) is a studious, serious teen from a poor family with a scholarship to a very good school. Her father is seriously ill and her mother works hard to make ends meet. She has a rather tense, quarrelsome relationship with her sister Soma (Jenita Samaraweera), who is naughtier, flightier and always receiving letters from “pen pals” – boys. Kusum’s sobering story is triggered in flashback by the sight of a visiting local dignitary, the “divisional revenue officer”, being welcomed to her village.