AllMovie

In this languid tragedy, two generations of lovers suffer from the social restrictions imposed on them by their local Malayam culture and by Islam. Though Abu and his wife Amina are happy together, they are poor because Abu's adoptive father has lost everything in a lawsuit. When a local merchant offers a fee to Abu if he will divorce his pretty wife and allow him to take her on as his second wife (which is allowed under Islamic law), he feels duty-bound to accept, though it breaks his heart. Years later, Amina has given birth to two of the merchant's children. One of them is a girl who will not repeat her mother's passivity but runs off with her beloved, a chauffeur. Not only that, she defends her actions in court. However, the now elderly Abu and Amina still love one another and prove it by building a huge funeral pyre by the ocean and throwing themselves on it together.