• Sumitra Peries’s ‘Gehenu Lamai’ (1978)

‘Gehenu Lamai’ (‘The Girls,’ 1978), directed by Sumitra Peries, was restored in 4K in 2025 by Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) in association with the Lester James Peries and Sumitra Peries Foundation at L’immagine Ritrovata laboratory, under the aegis of France-India-Sri Lanka Cine Heritage (FISCH) – Saving Film Across Borders – a pioneering international collaboration between FHF, the Embassy of France and the French Institute in India, and the Embassy of France in Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

The recent 4K restoration of ‘Gehenu Lamai,’ the debut of Sri Lankan director Sumitra Peries (1935-2023), was screened at Cannes last May. It has since been screened in other cities and countries, including Italy, Melbourne, and Colombo. The London Film Festival, which opens in October, will be featuring it as well.

When it first appeared in London, ‘Gehenu Lamai’ mesmerised critics. David Robinson of The London Times, for instance, praised it for what he saw as its “holistic feminine sensibility”. Similar reviews appeared in Germany and Madras (now Chennai) when it received screenings there. There was praise for its acting and editing. Critics at the Mannheim Film Festival in Germany lauded it for its “aura of pessimism” and “unobtrusive photography”.

By the time of its release in 1978, Sumitra and her husband Lester James Peries had been firmly established as leading auteurs of Sri Lankan cinema: Lester as a director, and Sumitra as an editor, easily the most sought-after in the country.

After working more than a decade for other directors, Sumitra ventured into filmmaking on her own right. ‘Gehenu Lamai,’ which she and Lester produced, broke ground by delving into a world and an experience which Sri Lankan, and South Asian, filmmakers had not properly explored before. 

In that sense it proved to be highly unique, if somewhat unprecedented: a film about the agony and torment of being a woman in South Asia, directed by a South Asian woman, and pervaded, as Robinson saw it, by a “feminine sensibility”.

Deceptive simplicity

The plot of ‘Gehenu Lamai’ is deceptively simple. 

Based on a sentimental but popular novel by the Sri Lankan writer Karunasena Jayalath – whose ‘Golu Hadawatha’ (‘The Silence of the Heart’), about unrequited teenage love, had been directed by Lester and released to much acclaim a decade earlier – Sumitra’s film tells the story of an innocent and sensitive schoolgirl called Kusum (Vasanthi Chathurani), who plans to enter university. Kusum and her sister Soma (Jenita Samaraweera) are living with their parents; their mother Jenny (Trilicia Gunawardana) struggles hard to pay for their education.

Then, one day, Kusum’s rich cousin Nimal Hathurusinghe (Ajith Jinadasa) falls in love with her. He proposes to her, but Kusum hesitates and rejects him; she is afraid of breaking the trust of Nimal’s overbearing mother (Chitra Wakishta). However, almost against her will, she finds her affection for him growing, and slowly discovers some freedom in romance. 

When the affair is discovered not long after, she faces the consequences. Meanwhile, the more ambitious Soma, who dreams of a glamorous life as an actress, wins a beauty contest and begins an affair with a film director. This too leads to a dead-end.

Because of Sumitra’s direction, and the novel – Jayalath was well known for his sympathetic views on women – ‘Gehenu Lamai’ is filled with empathy for its young, sensitive protagonist. From the opening, where Kusum, who has fallen on hard times, comes across Nimal, who has by now been appointed as a Divisional Revenue Officer (DRO), the film explores the links and contradictions between class and gender.

In one otherwise minor scene, for instance, a radicalised student goes on a diatribe against capitalism. He invites Kusum and another classmate Padmini (Shyama Ananda) to join the debate. Kusum casually smiles and replies: “Unlike you boys, we cannot spend late hours in the classroom.” 

In a more climactic sequence, Nimal faults her for arguing with a rich and snobbish girl. Fighting back tears, Kusum declares: “But I also have a heart like other people. I don’t like being humiliated, like other people. Please let me be. Please.” The latter scene, which ends with Kusum running away from Nimal and collapsing and sobbing inconsolably by a tree, is perhaps the most powerful in the film.

‘A very personal film’

Such scenes show that, though rooted in a sentimental teenage romance, ‘Gehenu Lamai’ questioned gender and class as few Sri Lankan films had done until then. Vilasnee Tampoe-Hautin comments in her biography of Sumitra Peries that the locus of the film is “the grey area where tradition and progress meet”. 

The overarching theme is that tradition stifles femininity. Sumitra touches on this by exploring how different the two sisters are, yet how similar their fates become. Kusum is traditionalist and deferential; Soma is rebellious and ambitious. But in the end, both lose out. As one contemporary review put it, “Virtue does not always lead to success.” Neither, it would seem, does defiance.

Ultimately, ‘Gehenu Lamai’ works at multiple levels. It is at once an indictment of patriarchy and tradition, an easily relatable love story, and a window to a world few filmmakers in Sri Lanka, or South Asia, have been able to enter with as much grace since. 

As Mark Cousins observed for me some time back, “she probes shyness and tentative love” throughout. The last word should, in that sense, be Sumitra’s. When I interviewed her in 2016, she called it “a very personal film – perhaps the most personal I have done”.

(A version of this article was published on the website of the British Film Institute)

(The writer is a researcher, writer, and columnist whose work spans art, culture, history, and foreign policy. He is currently working on an oral autobiography of the late Sri Lankan director Sumitra Peries (1935-2023), slated for publication in 2026. He can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com)

(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the official position of this publication)