New Delhi, March 6 After the resounding success of their "Colours" trilogy that juxtaposes the lives of Indian women in todays India with the ideals behind the three colours of the national flag as envisioned by the founding fathers, the husband and wife duo of writer-director A.K. Srikanth and Bharatanatyam exponent Savitha Sastry now offer viewers "Beyond the Rains", a gentle yet powerful film that tugs at the heartstrings, albeit in a more subtle sense.
Framed like a Haiku - a Japanese poem in 17 syllables – with much the same nuance and maturity that the Japanese poetry form is famed for, the film delicately portrays the emotion of love as understood by a retired old dancer struck by senility, who lives in her memories, and a young girl who is looking to the future alone.
"Srikanth's idea was to create a film that impacted its viewers in the same manner that a beautifully written Haiku would," Savitha explained to in an interview.
"The story is structured roughly in three parts and there is a persistent rain that follows the narrative, as though adding to the flavour and context of the story. It follows a love story as viewed through the eyes of a senile old lady who was a dancer in her youth, and a young reporter who is an ambitious young girl of these times. The old lady is a Phantom from the past, and the young girl a no-nonsense journalist. The juxtaposition of these two views makes for most of the narrative.
"I tried to ensure that the choreography echoed the same gentleness with which the story was being narrated. In fact, the director's vision to us all was that he wanted to create a film that had the tenderness of a dew drop about to fall from a leaf," Savitha elaborated
"Beyond the Rains" is based on a short story titled "The Girl in the Bubble" written by Srikanth. While the story was written sometime in 2019, the duo were busy with other projects and also hampered in keeping to the deadlines of completing those projects because of the pandemic.
"When the ‘Colours' trilogy was complete, we thought perhaps it was time to bring this story to celluloid, also given the fact that it was completely different in genre to the trilogy
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