Water (**1/2)

The plight of the widow in India, the particulars of India’s caste system, and the promise of change brought by Gandhi are certainly excellent subjects for a film, but this Water doesn’t really move, in any sense.

Set in 1938, Deepa Mehta’s Water follows an eight-year-old as she’s sent to an ashram, a place where widows are sent to live and worship together. Because the movies deal with antiquated female-oriented social systems, and start the same way, with a child being unwillingly taken from her home, I was mentally comparing this with Memoirs of a Geisha. Where the geisha system simultaneously exploits and empowers women, the ashram is portrayed as essentially a dumping ground for used-up women who are expected to mourn their husbands forever, even if they were child brides who’d never met them. Notwithstanding the use of scripture to justify this arrangement, the most attractive of the widows, Kalyani (Lisa Ray), is expected to prostitute herself for the good of the group. The film slowly, very slowly, introduces us to the diverse women in the ashram, and to the particular customs of their social arrangement. The modern point of view is represented by Bollywood star John Abraham’s character, a university-educated fan of Gandhi who’s not only incredibly enlightened but seriously handsome to boot. He is therefore instantly attracted to Kalyani. For all that Memoirs of a Geisha represented a triumph of style over substance, it still had a more substantial plot than Water, which follows Mehta’s Fire and Earth in critiquing India’s rigid social structures. Water is sometimes beautiful to look at, but its romance is not touching when it’s supposed to be, and its portrayal of the culture fairly shallow. I did get into the story eventually, but until then it this was some slow-moving Water.

IMDb link

posted 8/21/13