`WATER' EXAMINES INDIA'S CHILD BRIDE PRACTICE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Deepa Mehta's politically provocative, elementally titled films - there were ``Fire'' and ``Earth'' before this one, ``Water'' - tend to rile Hindu fundamentalists back home in India.

``Water,'' in fact, got 'em so upset that they burned down the sets of the writer-director's first attempt to shoot the movie. It took seven years and relocating to Sri Lanka for Mehta to finally produce the piece.

What bugged the fanatics so much? As with many complaints of an allegedly religious nature, ``Water's'' main sticking points are really about sex.

Set in the late 1930s as Gandhi's liberation movement is really picking up steam, ``Water'' makes the point that the revered Mahatma not only agitated against British colonialism, but against some of the subcontinent's more backward traditions as well.

Few of which seemed more retrograde than the child bride practice. Unless maybe you count an obscure scriptural dictum that widows, if not remarried to one of their brothers-in-law, should live cloistered in ashrams, impoverished and without love until their own deaths.

Combine the two and you've got ``Water's'' story of Chuyia. Played by a bubbly Sri Lankan called Sarala - in phonetically memorized Hindi, yet - Chuyia is all of 8 when her creepy old groom conks out.

Her head shaved, and sequestered against her will in an austere hostel near the banks of the Ganges, irrepressible Chuyia sets about upending the iron rule of the ashram's grotesque matriarch Madhumati (Manorma). The little terror also endears herself to some of her sad new sisters, among them polar opposites Shakuntala (``Bandit Queen's'' Seema Biswas), who truly believes her life of quiet deprivation is God's will, and beautiful Kalyani (Canadian-born supermodel Lisa Ray), whom Madhumati hypocritically pimps out to wealthy Brahmins on the other side of the river.

Narayan (John Abraham, like Ray, a Bollywood-affiliated model-actor), an educated young Gandhi supporter from one of those privileged households, spots Kalyani at the river one day. It's forbidden love at first sight. He determines to marry the inappropriate woman, which raises more havoc at the ashram than Chuyia's childish mischief ever could. His folks aren't thrilled with the idea, either.

Of course, in this world of the most appalling double standards, complicated by ruthless economic considerations (the pragmatic reason most of the widows are warehoused like this is so their families won't have to care for them), things like innocence and true love are just invitations to tragedy.

Mehta is rightfully outraged by the sexist injustice in her story. And although she and her fine ensemble create more-or-less credible characters and plausible situations, that righteous indignation carries more of the movie than it probably should.

But, never having had my work threatened by angry mobs, who am I to deny Mehta her soapbox, dramatically oversudsed as it sometimes is? While child marriage and the systematic denigration of widows has reportedly waned in the decades since Indian independence, the filmmaker's experience proves that there's a long way to go before fairness and respect fully overcome traditionalist panic.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

WATER - Three stars

(PG-13: sex, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Sarala, Lisa Ray, John Abraham, Seema Biswas, Manorma.

Director: Deepa Mehta.

Running time: 1 hr. 54 min.

Playing: ArcLight, Hollywood; Monicas, Santa Monica.

In a nutshell: Sequestered widows are treated terribly in 1930s India, among them an 8-year-old child bride. Touching, if a little florid. In Hindi with English subtitles.

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An 8-year-old girl has her head shaved and will be held against her will in preparation for becoming a child bride, in ``Water,'' an Indian film made in Sri Lanka.