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Clip description
Ruth (Kate Winslet) and her friend, Radhi (Genevieve Lemon), meet Ruth’s mother, Miriam (Julie Hamiton), in a Delhi restaurant. Ruth tells her mother she has found what she is looking for in India. Mum tells Ruth that her father is gravely ill and asks her to return to Australia to see him.
Curator’s notes
This early sequence shows the clash between Ruth’s new world and the one she has left behind. The Indian music playing constantly in the background to this scene is integral in both establishing the location but also emphasising the clash between Ruth’s new and old worlds, the east and the west.
Adopting a new spiritual name, Ruth believes she has found truth and happiness. Ruth’s response to news of her father’s supposed terminal illness is blackly comic. She has become so immersed in her new beliefs she casts aside thoughts of returning home with the rationale that she will meet her father ‘in another life.’
In several passages such as this the screenplay casts a comically acidic eye over westerners who abandon conventional moral responsibility after being overwhelmed by eastern religion and philosophy. The actress playing Radhi is Genevieve Lemon, star of Jane Campion’s debut feature, Sweetie (1989).
