When old men lovingly caress worn objects (in this case, a disused factory), it’s usually an opener to flashback. And lo, sixty years ago the emotional man is a boy once again, working in a woollen mill outside Calcutta. This sweat-shop is also a depository in which poor families rid themselves of unwanted children. Girls like recent arrival Masha whom the young Ravi befriends. Smitten, they make a pact to reunite when they finally take leave of the factory but, of course, fate intervenes and their destiny is clouded.

There’s a Hollywood sensibility to the production that reflects the perspective of a German director in India. He asks us to consider the foreigner’s tradition, Scorsese’s Kundun for example, in this regard. And to be fair, Shadows Of Time does a good job of keeping its feet planted on both sides of the cultural divide. Florian Gallenberger’s production is elegantly crafted and beautifully acted: there’s an echo of Deepa Mehta in early scenes, those that work best. He manages to shock us into sobriety with the gruesome reality of child labour and prostitution; particularly as he lets us forget (temporarily) which decade we’re in.

As the story evolves – Ravi becomes a successful merchant, Masha marries well - it emerges that this is largely a romantic drama with interests that lie in the emotional, not social, context: guilt, suffering, fortune. Providence is at the key of this billowing drama and it’s here that Shadows of Time will either sweep you away, or leave you wanting. It rests entirely on your taste for fatalism, culturally observant as that may be. A dangerous position nonetheless, one that often leads to old men caressing worn objects.

// COLIN FRASER