Before the Rains Reviews
Top Critic
It's definitely good, definitely a little bit boring.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
India has rarely looked so beautiful onscreen. Against the anguish of his human characters, director Santosh Sivan juxtaposes a tranquil, green world in the hills of the southwestern state of Keralain 1937, 10 years before independence.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
When the rains in Before the Rains finally arrive, there's nothing to cleanse, no real dirt to wash away -- not with history already so neatly packaged and polished to a dull shine.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
It might have been more convincing if it had emphasized personalities rather than types.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Unfortunately, the parade of consequences brought on by the affair has little emotional substance.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
Producer Ismail Merchant died in 2005, but Merchant Ivory's stuffy tradition of quality lives on.
A predictable patchwork of forbidden romance, English arrogance, a gun given as a gift, suicide, corruption, deception, rising Indian nationalism and a short-lived chase through the jungle.
Before the Rains is never less than compelling, but never more than adequately realized.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
It's standard soap opera dramaturgy in wrinkled linens, loincloths and saris.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The problem isn't just that the material is cliched and vaguely offensive....It's more that the plot is incredibly predictable, the score is manipulative and the denouement completely unsatisfying.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
A lovely, lyrical film with perfect timing that is a welcome relief from BlackBerrys, iPods, gas taxes, punk rock, the failing economy and the boredom of cutthroat election campaigns.
Merchant-Ivory productions are usually visual delights, and Before the Rains is no exception. Pity that the direction and narrative lack passion. If there's anything a story of interracial adultery needs, it's passion.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
So pretty and so utterly lifeless you can almost smell the embalming fluid coming off the screen.
The film is well-acted, a broad colonial allegory, and again, visually gorgeous.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
The ingredients of the Indian director Santosh Sivan's period piece Before the Rains may be awfully familiar, but the film lends them the force of tragedy.
| Original Score: 4/5
Director Santosh Sivan imparts a vastness and a sense of wonder to the film, qualities reminiscent of a Thomas Cole painting: They remind you why the Brits thought conquering India was a good idea in the first place.
No amount of lingering shots of nature's rich pageant can make up for its lack of human involvement.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/6
Rahul Bose has a winning presence -- eager with a touch of wariness or wary with a touch of eagerness, and never entirely at home. He keeps the movie from seeming too comfy -- a good thing.
Lacking the emotional power necessary to fuel its contrived plot elements, the film is a minor entry in the Merchant Ivory canon.
The emotionally charged mysteries of his breakthrough feature, The Terrorist, have given way to laborious narrative convention in Indian helmer Santosh Sivan's latest, English-lingo period meller Before the Rains.
