Sensuous, delicate, poetic: The 1978 classic from Sri Lanka that is set to make a splash at Cannes
Sri Lankan director Prasanna Vithanage was a teenager in 1978 when he first encountered one of the most beguiling chronicles of adolescence. Sumitra Peries's film Gehenu Lamai, about a young girl's formative experiences, resembled an Impressionist painting in its intricacy and beauty, said Vithanage.
'Sumitra had a distinctive vision and used the cinematic language in a poetic manner,' observed Vithanage, who is among his country's most prominent filmmakers. He was mesmerised enough by Gehenu Lamai to watch it two more times in the cinema. Decades after its release, Gehenu Lamai still casts a spell.
Peries's Sinhala-language debut feature, which she also wrote and edited, is a masterpiece of rhythm and mood. Gehenu Lamai (Girls) will be screened at this year's Cannes Film Festival (May 13-24) in the section devoted to classics and restored titles.
Gehenu Lamai will be presented along with Satyajit Ray's Aranyer Din Ratri (1970) by the Film Heritage Foundation, the Mumbai-based organisation dedicated to the preservation of cinema.
The Sri Lankan contingent for Gehenu Lamai will include lead actors Vasanthi Chaturani and Ajith Jinadasa. The Aranyer Din Ratri screening will be attended by, among others, lead actor Sharmila Tagore and Wes Anderson, the Hollywood director and Rayphile.
It's an emotional moment for Film Heritage Foundation founder Shivendra Singh Dungarpur – and not only because he is taking two projects to Cannes this time. The restoration of Gehenu Lamai caps years of efforts to bring the treasures of Sri Lankan cinema to the world, Dungarpur told Scroll.
Dungarpur first met Sumitra Peries and her husband, filmmaker Lester James Peries, in 2009. Dungarpur was in Sri Lanka to shoot a commercial. Popular actor Ravindra Rendeniya, who had acted in Lester James Peries's Desa Nisa (1975), introduced Dungarpur to the director reputed as one of the chief architects of Sri Lankan cinema.
Dungarpur had watched a few of Peries's movies as a student at the Film and Television Institute of India. When Dungarpur set out to make the documentary Celluloid Man (2012), about the legendary archivist PK Nair, he knew he had to interview Peries, who had spoken fondly of Nair during the 2009 visit.
'During the conversation about Nair saab, Lester said that none of his films had been restored and were poorly maintained,' Dungarpur recalled. Dungarpur put Peries in contact with the World Cinema Project, founded by Martin Scorsese to preserve neglected films, and the Italian film archive Cineteca di Bologna. This resulted in the restoration of Peries's 1972 classic Nidhanaya (Treasure).
Dungarpur kept meeting with the Peries couple during subsequent visits to Sri Lanka. 'They were wonderful – their house in Colombo was filled with warmth and Sumitra's laughter,' Dungarpur said. At some point, the conversation veered to the films that Sumitra Peries had directed. Might the Film Heritage Foundation help restore her features, starting with Gehenu Lamai?
'Sumitra sent me six DVDs with handwritten notes describing the order in which she wanted the films restored,' Dungarpur said. Although the DVD copy of Gehenu Lamai gave little indication of its technical prowess, Dungarpur was hooked.
'It's a work of pure cinema,' Dungarpur said. 'It's structurally very well put together and doesn't feel like a first film. It has beautiful textures and compositions, which remind me of the Malayalam films being made in India in the same period.'
Gehenu Lamai is indeed special. The film is suffused with the intensity of feeling perhaps unique to adolescents, and especially to girls.
Kusum (Vasanthi Chathurani) is in love with Nimal (Ajith Jinadasa) despite the differences in their social status. While Nimal is fired up about Sri Lanka's post-colonial present and future, Kusum is obedient, proper and mindful of her responsibilities towards her mother and sister. When Kusum's sister enrols in a beauty contest and later becomes pregnant, Kusum is forced to choose between love and duty.
The story, adapted from a novel of the same name by Karunasena Jayalath, unfolds through lyrical passages and realistic performances. Sumitra Pereis's portrait of girlhood has a sensuous quality, especially in the scenes revolving around Kusum and Nimal. Kusum is often framed against lush foliage, the backdrop a reflection of her emotional state.
The dappled lighting and intimate close-ups were the handiwork of MS Ananda, who had previously worked with Lester James Peries. Ananda was one of the leading cinematographers in Sri Lankan cinema, Prasanna Vithanage pointed out.
Ananda's daughter Shyama – whom Ananda later directed in a series of films – plays Kusum's school friend Padmini in Gehenu Lamai. The film subtly suggests that Padmini's heart beats for Kusum – a radical idea in the 1970s.
' Gehenu Lamai relies entirely on visuals to bring out the sexuality of the characters and their feelings for each other,' Vithanage observed. 'Before this film, nobody had depicted the relationship between men and women in this way. It was quite revolutionary'.
Sumitra Peries, who died in 2023, was one of Sri Lankan cinema's earliest female directors. (Her husband passed away in 2018.) There had been three women who had made films before Sumitra Peries, according to Vithanage, but none of them had Peries's artistry or longevity.
'Before Gehenu Lamai, Sumitra had been Lester's life companion as well as artistic companion,' Vithanage said. 'With this film, she came out from under his shadow and created her own identity. We would frequently talk to each other over the phone. Right until the end, she was planning her next project.'
In an essay on Sumitra Peries in the anthology Asian Film Journeys – Selections from Cinemaya, Sri Lankan critic Ashley Ratnavibhushana writes that Peries started out as an editor of her husband's acclaimed film Gamperaliya (The Changing Village, 1963). 'Rather than work toward a feminist cinema, she preferred to strive for a feminine sensitivity, a trait she retained throughout her career,' Ratnavibhushana writes.
Despite its reputation, Gehunu Lamai was in a poor condition when Film Heritage Foundation and the Lester James Peries and Sumitra Peries Foundation embarked on its revival. A grant provided by FISCH: France-India-Sri Lanka Cine Heritage – Saving Film Across Borders aided the 4K restoration from prints preserved at the National Film Corporation of Sri Lanka.
'It was one of the most challenging restorations because the material was in critical condition,' Dungarpur said. 'There were embedded subtitles that had to be removed.'
The restoration was carried out by the L'Immagine Ritrovata restoration lab in Bologna, Italy. Technicians who had worked on the 1978 production were consulted, as also were the lead actors.
'Several reels had tears, broken sprockets, blockage, shrinkage, emulsion damage, buckling and warping,' according to a press note. 'The sound restoration was particularly challenging. The quality of the sound was generally low and varied with issues such as click and crackle noises and hiss present across all reels, physical gaps, damaged optical sound tracks that rendered the sound inaudible in parts, high electrical noise and distortion.'
The new version is bound to be a discovery for the Cannes delegates. Gehanu Lamai will be screened alongside such classics as Mikio Naruse's Floating Clouds (1955), Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975) and Edward Yang's Yi Yi (2000).
In its delicate evocation of unsaid feelings and its dexterous use of cinematic tools, Gehanu Lamai chimes with Payal Kapadia's Cannes-winning All We Imagine As Light (2024). Kapadia is among the jury members at Cannes this year, making Gehanu Lamai 's presence at the festival apposite.
'The film has sensuality without making it evident,' Vithanage said. 'There is a strong sense of nature in the film, which gives the feeling of innocence.'
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