THIS, the second in Deepa Mehta's trilogy of films Fire, Earth and Water, is set in Lahore in 1947 as the British prepare to relinquish their rule of India. If you know your history, you'll know about the ensuing bloodbath that followed the partition of India into nations based on religion. In all, an estimated one million people died in the religious strife that followed upheaval of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs to India and Pakistan.

With the nuclear arms race between Pakistan and India moving ahead at full throttle, the time for a serious film from that region has never been more important. "Earth" aspires to be that, but doesn't come anywhere close. A glancing, often mawkish look at the impact of partition on a small group of friends of mixed religions, it lacks any real force. At one level, it is a bitter sweet romance, a Bollywood influenced confection; at another level it attempts to shock with a catalogue of atrocities. Meanwhile, the human loss, the turning of friends into enemies, is skipped over. It is interesting to compare "Earth" with the recently made Pakistan-made film Jinnah a much more dry, articulated piece of nationalist cinema. Refreshingly, "Earth" takes no sides, but its comment that human nature is to blame for the post-partition violence is really just a glib footnote in an otherwise unimpressive war romance.