"A European specialist in religious texts is summoned to Sri Lanka to decode a sacred text dealing with memory while he turns to alcohol to forget. He decodes his own past in it, encounters different char-acters and, thus, fulfils his destiny. On the way...
A film with characters from East and West confronted with very concrete problems (personal and political conflict; attachment and mourning; interventionist or passive attitudes), but also confronted with the inexorable cycle of life and death. A film on the strata of memory.
Personal memory: the life of individuals with their past, their loves, their acquisitions. And collective memory: culture, religion, ethnic roots. A film on the relativity of things: "Whatever happens, nothing happens". That is one of the adages of this story... But it is also a film with palm trees, umbrellas, women in red, yellow and blue, aspirin, music, bedrooms, dancers, flowers, ice-cubes and many birds."
(Patricia Plattner)