SEED *

Visually, Don Palathara's film "Seed" has much more in common with the cinema of the great Satyajit Ray than it does to what we know as Bollywood. Unfortunately what it lacks is Ray's ability to engage with his characters or to make us feel involved in what is happening to them. It may be visually very beautiful, (he shoots it in black and white and often in single takes with very little cutting), but it is also very, very slow; a look at his inspirations on the final credits will tell you all you need to know.

What his camera does is observe at great length people doing very little, (a masturbation scene is nicely 'out of place' but he films it off-screen). What it most closely resembles is a documentary about nothing in particular which is a pity as Palathara has a remarkably good eye and this might have made a great 30-minute film had he not dragged it out to feature length so that ultimately even our admiration for his skills starts to pall quite early on. Still, I am keen on seeing where he will go from here. An art-house crowd who like those 'inspirations' might lap this up but Palathara needs to be his own man.