I cannot love you halfheartedly.

With You, Without You
Prasanna Vithanage 2012 Sri Lanka
Starring: Shyam Fernando, Anjali Patil, Wasantha Moragoda, Maheshwari Ratnam

Traditionally actors working outside their native countries can be a double-edged sword. Obviously many Brits have been successful in Hollywood but generally when there's a language barrier the results can go either way. At times the casting will be a massively exciting prospect and an opportunity to witness some of your favourite performers and directors collaborate but there's always a risk that the style either may have become known for just won't gel with one another. Indian cinema (note I say Indian not Bollywood, which only refers to the mainstream Hindi industry) is no different. There over twenty different cinematic scenes exist - among them Tamil and Malayalam in the very south, Marathi in the west and Telugu in Hyderabad - but most workers stick to one area. Some like the veteran Jackie Shroff have worked in several fields in several languages but even big stars that cross over are often subject to their performances being dubbed. Very occasionally there will be an exception though, the magnificent Aishwarya Rai for example attempted to broaden her horizons by working in English, making the (aside from her) utterly terrible UK work Provoked and the USA based The Mistress Of Spices. Recently however another of the country's actresses has made the jump. Anjali Patil, who so impressed me in the 2012 Bollywood action movie Chakravyuh (my favourite Bollywood film of that year), has stepped outside her Marathi origins again to star in a Sri Lankan adaptation of Dostoevsky's A Gentle Spirit (sometimes translated as A Gentle Creature or The Meek One), With You, Without You, where she acts in both Tamil and Sinhalese and she's exceptional. Luminous when she needs to be, radiating a likeable innocence in her discovery of a richer life and making herself monstrous with grief in the heartbreakingly powerful dramatic moments. Her role here is that of a poverty-stricken Tamil woman in a Sinhalese area eking out a living via menial labour and selling her jewellery to a pawnbroker. Her opposite number, played with a quiet intensity by Shyam Fernando, is the pawnbroker. While that may initially appear to signal a traditional, clichéd, love-across-barriers romance nothing could be further from the truth - in fact there's very little romance of any kind and their marriage is only his attempt to prevent her from giving herself to a rich older man who has 'taken an interest in her'. Instead it's an affecting emotional drama with the distance between the lead characters (shown cleverly from the outset with both obscured through the security grill attached to his counter) examining the aftereffects of the country's civil war. While his motives are undoubtedly nobler than her other admirer though whether he's much of a suitable alternative is another matter. He's sullen, dismissive, frugal to the point of meanness, he asks nothing of her but also nothing about her, almost as if he's afraid of her, love and himself. As the story unfolds the reasons for his issues become clear and the slow, subtle approach pays off tenfold with both actors truly incredible and Prasanna Vithanage's direction pared down to a minimum. As a whole I really can't compliment the film enough and it's easily one of the top five I've seen this year.