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Kama
Sutra: A Tale of Love
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These days at the movies, we only have the occasional comic romp like Sex and Zen (1991) to remind us of that great era when above-ground erotic movies were everywhere – particularly in the art house cinemas, where such directors as Walerian Borowczyk and Miklos Jancsó engorged us with their fanciful visions of a fondly aphrodisiac world. Kama Sutra makes me long for those long lost films of the '70s with titles like Three Immoral Women (1979) or Anatomy of a Relationship (1976). Because Mira Nair's movie, very loosely inspired by the classic Indian text and its lessons on the art of love, is truly awful. It is certainly very clunky. Nair tries to fashion a passionate melodrama by setting up two women – the regal Tara (Sarita Choudhury) and the lowly Maya (Indira Varma) – in a struggle over the heart and body of a dissolute king (Naveen Andrews). Woven awkwardly into this poorly realised tale is a series of pompous lectures about erotic practices – although, be warned, there is far more attention given to the "dance of enticement" than any actual sexual position. Nothing works in this movie. The actors (especially Andrews) look ill at ease, walking and talking like twentieth-century nightclubbers instead of sixteenth-century citizens. The film has no rhythm, drive or intrigue. Nair has not yet transcended the deficiencies of her previous efforts (Salaam Bombay!, 1988, and Mississippi Masala, 1992) – films full of worthy intentions but lacking any real cinematic spark or flair. Nair employs a combination of tact and suggestiveness here that is, frankly, a big turn-off. On the one hand, she avoids like the plague anything remotely raunchy or vulgar. On the other hand, she indulges a mild taste for politically-correct titillation, sprinkling throughout the movie inane little gestures towards a polymorphously perverse eroticism. So we get scenes of a sisterly, sensual frisson between Maya and Tara – but nothing as forthright as lesbianism is anywhere to be glimpsed. MORE Nair: Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair © Adrian Martin May 1997 |
