The Girls review – poignant coming-of-age romance is an understated gem of Sri Lankan cinema

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Sumitra Peries’ 1978 film about teenage sisters and thwarted romance is laden with passions that can’t be spoken aloud Here is a gem of South Asian cinema from 1978, by the Sri Lankan director and editor Sumitra Peries. With its lucid monochrome cinematography and calm, natural, unselfconscious performances, there is a freshness and warmth to this film. It is often on the brink of melodrama or soap opera, many shots having a tendency to slow zoom into the actors’ faces, and yet The Girls is in fact rather understated. A great deal of its poignancy resides in this very suppression of emotion. We are in a world of passions that can’t be spoken aloud. It is a story through whose entire running time I wistfully hoped for a happy ending, but that is what Peries ruthlessly withholds from her audience. Kusum (Vasanthi Chathurani) is a studious, serious teen from a poor family with a scholarship to a very good school. Her father is seriously ill and her mother works hard to make ends meet. She...
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​​Streaming: where to watch the best 2023 Bafta contenders

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Ahead of this weekend’s awards ceremony, here’s our guide to the runners and riders – from All Quiet on the Western Front to The Quiet Girl – as well as the greatest best film winners of the past

The Baftas can seem like another stepping stone on the long road to the Oscars, but the UK industry’s highest honour can assert its own identity when it wants. Last year the British Academy of Film and Television Arts gave its best actress award to Joanna Scanlan for After Love, a film scarcely seen across the Atlantic, and for the seventh time in the past eight years chose differently from the US Academy in the best film race. (Bafta went for Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog while the Oscar went to the wispy Coda: a point to the Brits there.)

Tomorrow night we can hope for more bold choices. Netflix, hot off its victory last year, once more boasts the top nominee. Not many expected Edward Berger’s German-language All Quiet on the Western Front to lead the field with a whopping 14 nods – the most for any film at the Baftas since The King’s Speech 12 years ago. Rather quietly released to the streaming service last November, this robustly stirring, immaculately crafted adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s classic first world war novel is well worth catching up with – even if its harrowing battle scenes really demand a large screen.

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