Prisoners of Paradise review – Ellie Bamber heads to Mauritius for chaste literary tale of star-crossed lovers

Here is a tale of love across the divide, based on a novel by Booker nominee Romesh Gunesekera. Set in 1925, it revolves around 17-year-old Lucy (Ellie Bamber), a beautiful young upper-class Englishwoman sent to live on her uncle’s sugar plantation in colonial Mauritius. There she meets Krishna (Mehdi Dehbi), a local man of Indian heritage employed by her uncle in the fields. In a Mr Darcy-style moment early on, Lucy spies Krishna stripped to the waist and splashing about in a waterfall. But Prisoners of Paradise is a chaste and idealistic drama, and even this moment is filmed in a damp, unerotic way, as if a bit of phwoar would sully Lucy and Krishna’s noble hearts.

Lucy has arrived at Ambleside, the plantation house owned by her uncle George (Rupert Penry-Jones) after the death of her mother. Mauritius’s economy was built on the labour of African slaves and later indentured workers from India. It’s now nearly a century after the abolition of slavery, but uncle George has not removed the torture instruments from his garden, where shackles still hang from a post. He also clings to abhorrent beliefs about racial superiority. Lucy is appalled by his views, and shocked by the casual racism in his circle. When she falls for Krishna, they begin to meet in secret.

Despite the film’s good intentions, the lovers are a saintly, insipid pair and like all the characters, too lightly sketched, though Penry-Jones does a good job as uncle George, showing glints of weakness and self-loathing behind his upper-crust bluster. The plantation is failing, and George’s only hope of keeping afloat is Lucy marrying wealthy Frenchman Antoine (Edward Akrout). Added to this, it’s a frustratingly underdeveloped one-sided story; we see very little of Krishna’s life in the fields or in his village. The realities of his life and the conditions of workers are nothing to the love story, which unfortunately, is about as intoxicating as camomile tea.