Washington: "Before the Rains", director Santosh Sivan's English language debut drama set in 1937 India, has hit Washington to mixed reviews with one calling it a "beautiful film" and another branding it "a hodgepodge in the Raj".

Though set in a small village in Kerala in 1937, "the film's concerns resonate far beyond that very specific time and place", says Kelly Jane Torrance in the Washington Times calling it a "beautiful film about some very ugly emotions."

It may all sound like the stuff of melodrama, but Sivan has made something much more real and human, she says. "Serving as his own cinematographer, Sivan has also made something stunning."

"From the sweeping looks at the landscape to the energetic shots of marching Indian nationalists to the achingly personal moments between lovers, every shot in this film is luminously composed," says Torrance.

But Adam Bernstein of the The Washington Post found it just "a hodgepodge in the Raj - a predictable patchwork of forbidden romance, English arrogance, a gun given as a gift, suicide, corruption, deception, rising Indian nationalism and a short-lived chase through the jungle".

According to him, Sivan, a veteran cinematographer, won justifiable praise for his 1999 Tamil-language film, "The Terrorist", about a young woman sent on a suicide assassination mission. But the seemingly larger budget of the film presented by Merchant Ivory Productions "seems to prove that more does not always mean more".