Indian Summer

Shakespeare Wallah is a wry, wistful look at what is left of the English in India. It has been nearly 20 years since the British hauled down the Union Jack and went back to their tight little island. Even so, a poverty-ridden troupe of English Shakespeare players still continues its work, bringing the Bard to the provinces. But India no longer has time for the old gentilities, and wherever the itinerant Shakespeareans try to move their goods (wallah is Hindi for peddler), they meet stiff sales resistance. Indians, like most of the rest of the world, have forsaken the theater for the film, and the cheapest movie actress means more to them than the most lyric Lear. The once-prominent troupe, reduced by death and penury to mother, father and ingenue daughter, stops play acting to settle for one-night stands of "Gems from Shakespeare." The daughter, by now caught in a hopeless triangle between an Indian boy and his film-star mistress, sails for a Britain she has never seen. The Indian summer of the English colonial, the film implies, is over.

Director James Ivory, an American who has done most of his work in India, took notes from the Indian director Satyajit Ray both literally (Ray wrote the musical score) and figuratively: Shakespeare has the same porous texture that Ray puts into his work. No attempt at calculated plotting is made; the story flows simply and slowly, like honey from a gourd, until at last, when there is nothing left to tell, it comes to a quiet end.

Despite this indulgent direction, the film has moments of brilliance and grace. The wide Indian countryside is mistily evoked without calling undue attention to itself. Shashi Kapoor gives ironic strength to the role of the rich young Indian who mocks Hamlet's indecision but cannot force himself to choose between women. Felicity Kendal manages to be pathetically believable as the ingenue of innocence and insight. But it is Madhur Jaffrey as the film star who dances away with the show. Pale and supple as an ibis, she slithers through the film like an erotic ivory temple carving come to life, the embodiment of an India that continues to attract the Western visitor without giving any of itself away.

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