(Greece/Germany/India, 1995) -- directed by Nilita Vachani, produced by Nilita Vachani and Vangelis Kalambakas, in English and Sinhala with English subtitles. -- Little Theatre, Saturday, May 3.

Perhaps the most alien of the entries in the inaugural Bermuda International Film Festival, the documentary `When Mother Comes Home For Christmas' takes as its text the plight of expatriate workers, a variation on a theme with which Bermuda has an intimate familiarity.

The topic is the wrenching effect economic circumstances wreak on the lives of those forced to work abroad to send money home to their impoverished families.

`When Mother Comes Home For Christmas' is a cinema-verite m look at the life of Josephine Perera, a Sri Lankan mother of three who works in Athens. The film opens with footage of the Government department responsible for explaining to young women how to cook and use a condom before sending them away to work for the good of their country.

Ten percent of Sri Lankans work overseas, and their remittances have become the country's largest source of foreign exchange. The Sri Lankans work largely as housemaids for the middle classes of southern Europe.

The household work is shown to be drudgery, the hours long and on the evidence of this film, those who hire Sri Lankan housemaids are among the vilest of self-centred human beings. "Having had my baby, I couldn't possibly have brought it up. I could not have done it,'' says the slick Greek housewife who employs Ms Perera.

Ms Perera returns to Sri Lanka after eight years away to confront the reality that her children are experiencing a range of social difficulties. Her visit is an emotional time for all concerned.

Ms Vachani's film was shot in sections, and the Greek interlude could, perhaps have been improved by showing some of the life Ms Perera leads outside of working hours. It dwells too briefly, however, on conditions at "the boarding'', a school in Sri Lanka in which the children of parents who have gone to work abroad are maintained.

For those keeping count, this made two foreign language films with two orphanages in two days.

Truth to tell, this movie was largely unwatchable. The sound came and went, and the oddly square video projection image had no contrast, making picking out the Sri Lankans' dark faces in the murk all but impossible for much of the time.

When, at one especially unlucky moment the sound gave out altogether and the image faded to near-black, one felt as if trapped underwater, or, on a more positive note, at a film festival where you had a choice and picked the wrong movie. You see the film through out of sheer filmic doggedness, but you don't really enjoy yourself.

How long, one wonders, before some enterprising film-maker notices that, for the most part, Bermuda's Portuguese community works harder than chambermaids for about the same money and takes them as his or her subject? One relatively indistinct apple does not spoil the whole bunch, and however arcane this movie, nothing spoiled the almost unique cultural experience of watching a difficult movie at the Little Theatre.

ROGER CROMBIE `When Mother comes Home for Christmas' will be shown again tomorrow night at the Liberty Theatre at 9.15 p.m. .