Nair's 'Kama' is step away from art of love
By Yogita Tahil Ramani
JAKARTA (JP): Anyone hoping to see erotic love scenes in Kamasutra: A Tale of Love is in for a big disappointment.
Director Mira Nair uses the 16th century tale to try to answer a 1990s dilemma: the distinction between love and sex. She does this with plush cushion-lined interiors, beautiful women and talks quoted from the fabled masterpiece on "how" to get the male characters to "love".
Although many of the love scenes have been cut by the censors, its message is not entirely lost.
Princess Tara (Sarita Choudhury) and her servant Maya (Indira Varma) grow up together and become inseparable friends even though Maya has to make do with Tara's hand-me-downs. Tara in turn has to live in the shadow of Maya's alluring beauty.
They part ways after Maya is caught sleeping with King Raj Singh (Naveen Andrews) the night before his wedding to Tara.
Maya leaves the village and falls into the hands of sculptor Jai Kumar (Ramon Tikaram). Jai introduces Maya to Rasa Devi (Rekha) who teaches future courtesans and queens the tenets of the Kama Sutra.
Maya becomes the model for Jai's works and they fall in love. The relationship ends once Jai feels he is becoming dependent on Maya in his work. The jilted lover goes to Rasa to learn the art of lovemaking and finds herself, ironically due to a sculpture made of her by Jai, in Raj Singh's domain and his "lover".
Calling the female actors beauties is an understatement.
Kama Sutra is about the expression of bodies. No two young female actors -- due to the generously shot sex scenes -- could possibly express language with their bodies in a more majestic fashion, excepting, of course, Rekha (she played the sensuous sex vixen in the Indian movie Utsav).
Varma is exceptionally beautiful with her beguiling eyes, conveying sexual innuendoes and innocence, but it is Choudhury's solemn eyes and lips that speak volumes in her silence and stares.
Some dialog in the film is notable in that it tells a thousand words with just a few.
When Maya visits Rasa Devi for the first time, she explains to her the "shame" she felt over sleeping with her friend's beau.
Manhood
Rasa Devi answers with an anecdote recalling when her lover, Raj Singh's father, was getting ready to go to war, his wife had washed his feet, and drank the same water everyday until her husband returned. Rasa Devi says that when he came back, he rode straight to her door, instead of his wife's. "So where was the shame, and where the honor?" she asks Maya.
Another memorable line is when Maya informs Tara after losing her virginity to Raj Singh: "All my life I have lived with your used things. Now something I have used is yours forever."
There is also the time when Raj Singh meets Jai Kumar and a disguised Maya in a brothel and tells them his definition of manhood: "Eat meat, ride meat and put meat into meat."
There are also woefully dumb lines that stifle the scenes, more likely caused by difficulties in adapting an Indian story into a film that is shot almost entirely in English.
Excepting a few Indian words to make the dialog sound authentic, many of the lines sound absurd. Unfortunately, some of these are in the movie's first 15 minutes.
One of them is when an old woman advises Tara, on the night before her wedding, that she should abstain from sex in the first three days of her marriage. "Your husband will embrace you with his upper body, and then you must put betelnut into his mouth."
Rulers in those days had several wives and most had harems teeming with courtesans. Why, then, would any king be willing to abstain from having sex with a beautiful virgin?
In any case, Raj Singh proves his domination over Tara on the first night, beginning with his self-arousing foreplay of derogatory remarks -- "You were your father's property, and now you are your husband's property" -- before literally raping her.
The most absurd exchange occurs when Maya asks an obviously sexually aroused Jai Kumar: "Why do you feel so free to touch me?" To which he answers: "It is because I work with my hands."
Although the characters in the movie are attired gorgeously in every scene and the settings are true to the 16th century, the same could not be said about some of the hairstyles. Typical Indian hairstyles are of knots and buns, but definitely not cone shaped. Conical accessories maybe, but not conical hairstyles.
On the whole, Kama Sutra, produced by Lydia Dean Pilcher, is more pleasing to the eye than the mind or soul.
Mira Nair's previous award-winning films like Salaam Bombay, Mississippi Masala and The Perez Family in no way prepares the audience for this mediocre production.
The film caused controversy in India this year and Nair had to go to the court to ensure its release. Despite all the trouble she went through, the movie adds up to very little.
It is still worth the trip to the movie theater for its ravishing shots, lavish scenes and some of the dialog.
The movie is sensuous but not erotic. Put succinctly, Kama Sutra teases without satisfying.