KAMA SUTRA: A TALE OF LOVE

Director: Mira Nair.
Screenplay: Mira Nair and Helena Kriel.
Starring: Indira Varma, Sarita Choudhury,
Naveen Andrews, Ramon Tikaram, Rekha.

The rise of the independent film movement in the United States and the

recent success of Third World cinema from places like Mexico, Iran,
China and India has been lauded as a healthy backlash against the
big-studios' sausage factory approach to movie-making; where the
dominant philosophy is to clone a block-buster as closely as
possible. In this context, "Kamasutra: A Tale of Love" aims to be bold
new experiment that marries the wisdom of an ancient Indian treatise
on sexuality with politics and power relations in a previously
unexplored setting (16th century pre-colonial India).

The movie tells the story of two friends, Tara (Sarita Chaudhury), a
high-caste princess, and Maya (Indira Varma), a palace servant. Maya's
beauty is a constant cause of jealousy and envy in Tara. However, when
the local prince, Raj Singh (Naveen Andrews) marries the upper class
Tara, it is an enraged Maya who seduces him to get back at her friend
for years of inferior treatment. When this infidelity is discovered,
Maya is banished from the palace. In exile, Maya is taken in by a
self-obsessed sculptor, Jai Kumar (Ramon Tikaram), with whom she has a
brief affair. When Jai dumps her to be with his "art", Maya goes
on to train with Rasa Devi (Rekha) to become a courtesan, eventually
leading her back to Tara and Raj. She also manages to reunite with old
flame Jai, and becomes the center of palace intrigue and power games
played with an ample amount of sex, drugs, and maudlin music.

Kamasutra: A Tale Of Love manages to take high-potential sexual
situations, foot-fetishes, back-scratching, torture, hunch-backs,
trampling by elephants, opium smoking, and political intrigue and
somewhat amazingly produce a tedious, intolerable bore. With a plot
that begs to be parodied, the movie wearily trudges along with a
self-indulgent opulence about as subtle as a strong kick in the
head. Peopled with brooding actors who uniformly express deep
sensuality with a sullen "I'm too sexy to be likeable" look, this
ridiculously a-historical movie is filled with heavy costumes,
one-dimensional characters, and unnatural, stylized sexual situations.

For the first half-hour, the film sweeps the viewer away with
resplendent sets and glorious cinematography. However, as the minutes
roll on, the heavy-handedness of the movie asserts itself front and
center. There is a great deal going for this movie, and exploiting
Kamasutra could have resulted in fresh, adventurous and unpredictable
fun. Instead, what we have is a tired, hackneyed melodrama that
routinely throws in stereotypical sub-plots like class, military
intrigue, and exploitation of physical deformity. As the movie drags
on into its second hour, one is inevitably reminded of more pressing
issues like making it to that PBS documentary on the mating habits of
Peregrine Falcons.

Perhaps most disappointingly, the film fails to communicate any of the
sexual pleasure and wisdom that might come from exploiting an ancient
treatise on the delights of flesh and spirit. While there is a good
amount of female nudity and even a marginally interesting lesbian
encounter, the general tone is one of "let me tell you how us

Bollywood brat-packers do it", rather than letting the viewer discover
anything on her own from the film's unfolding. Rasa Devi's lectures on
the spiritual and mystical nature of sexuality in the Kamasutra are
about as abstract and arousing as Naom Chomsky's seminars on
hidden-cleft constructions in Theoretical Linguistics.

While the cinematography and set designs are sometimes breathtaking,
and Indira Varma and Ramon Tikaram turn in tolerable performances, thepredictable soap-opera plot, and the heavy-handed, self-absorbed
direction leave "Kamasutra: A Tale of Love" devoid of any grace. This
movie is definitely not worth eight bucks of your money or 120 minutes
of your life.