Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love
The exquisitely filmed, voluptuous Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love is a visual feast of intense colors and caressing camerawork. From the stunning locales to the beautiful actors who populate this tale set in 16th century India, director Mira Nair has created an atmosphere of ripe sensuality.
Kama Sutra never looks beyond the lovely surface. The big problem here is a clunky script (by Nair and Helena Kriel) that substitutes unconvincing proclamations for genuine emotions.
Based in part on a short story called "Hand-Me-Downs" (by Waiida Tabassum), Kama Sutra begins by quickly sketching the relationship between a young princess named Tara, and her childhood friend, the servant Maya. The girls are inseparable, but as they grow up, Tara becomes more dominant, asserting her higher status. Maya, who naïvely viewed the princess as her peer, grows increasingly resentful of their changed relationship, especially of being the recipient of Tara's cast-offs.
After a public insult, an adult Maya (Indira Varma) takes her revenge by making herself quite available to an eager debauched royal, Raj Singh (Naveen Andrews from The English Patient), on his wedding night to Tara (Sarita Choudhury, star of Nair's 1992 interracial romance, Mississippi Masala).
From this event on, Kama Sutra becomes a series of confusing encounters — that depend greatly on coincidence and blind luck — that soon involves a passionate sculptor, Jai Kumar (Ramon Tikaram), who sees the expressive and earthy Maya as his muse. The former courtesan Rasa Devi (Indian film star Rekha), who instructs women on the "love lessons" contained in the 4th century Indian text The Kama Sutra of Vatsayana, says that while it is a guide describing how to better use bodies for love-making, the Kama Sutra also says that there is more to love than physical actions.
Indian-born director Nair (who made documentaries before her impressive 1988 feature debut Salaam Bombay!) is more comfortable with the physical aspects of the story than with the idea of transcendent love.
While Kama Sutra isn't a satisfying whole, some of its parts are superb. Cinematographer Declan Quinn (who shot Leaving Las Vegas) makes gorgeous use of India's vibrant earth tones, and some scenes— such as a mid-day wedding procession and a candle-lit visit to a bordello — are riots of intoxicating color.
This is heightened by the music of Mychael Danna who takes traditional Indian styles and blends them into a heady swirl of cross-cultural fusion (as he did in Atom Egoyan's Exotica). Equally impressive sets and costumes — not to mention elaborate body painting — all add to the enticing environment.
Sensuality is the key in the film's numerous sex scenes, which are not as risqué as the title Kama Sutra might suggest. But since the air in Mira Nair's evocative film is practically infused with the promise of pleasure, they seem almost redundant.
© 1996, Serena Donadoni. All rights reserved.