KAMA SUTRA : PASSIONLESS

For all its vaunted "tasteful sensuousness", Mira Nair's Kamasutra is shallow and static as an elaborate tableau where disinterested models saunter down in sulky boredom, flaunting ethnic kitsch for the consumption of an uncritical Western audience. Everything about Kamasutra - the actors with the sole exception of Rekha - the mise en scene, the conception and execution of its theme, is calculated to neatly create Orientalist image of exotic India. But it comes nowhere neat the informed perspective of India as the land where eroticism and asceticism, patriarchy and worship of female sexuality co-exist. All you get are the usual temple freezes of lovers abandoned to sexual nirvana and a woman meditating in the lotus pose. Plus of course the magnificent palaces of Rajasthan which don't look lived in as they should but more like dressed up archaeological ruins. Silks, satins and organzas rustle without a thought to period authenticity, egg-sized plastic pearls hang round coiffeurs out of Ajanta frescos. There! You have the instant India of touristy kitsch, muted to earth tones for a more "sophisticated" look.

It is pastiche without a soul. And anachronisms galore, like Mohini Attam being performed in Rajasthan and a famous Begum Akhtar ghazal startlingly out of place in 16th century India where the spoken language has a liberal sprinkling of Urdu-while the language of North India is yet to born a couple of centuries later in the cultural meting pot of Mughal India. The booby prize goes to this gem: the Vaid called in to diagnose the petulant, sex-starved queen is called "Doctor" as the examines his squirming patient through a hole in the all -enveloping chador - recall the famous passage so full of deliciously wicked humor is Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children? Unfortunately, there is no humor at all in Mira Nair's Kama Sutra - unlike its more splendid and authentic predecessor in period erotica, Girish Karnad's Utsav. One thought laughter was as much a part of love as heaving bosoms and trembling limbs.

There is no harm in catering to a ready made market in these days of intense competition for niche audiences but his should not be at the cost of research and some semblance of historical accuracy. The quarrel is not with the explicit sex - excised from the Hindi version by the Censors who apply double standards with impunity or those calibrated flashes of nudity. You cannot have a fully clothed depiction of the tenets of out ancient treatise on the art and science of sexual love. Nor is it the prudish objection to the subject itself. One welcomes an open and sensitive approach to the lost tradition of celebratory sensuality in a country now hung up on prurience and addicted to hypocrisy.

So, one was interested in how a filmmaker of Mira Nair's undeniable craftmanship, market acumen and intelligent articulation approached this taboo subject.

You even grant her the cinematic licence of setting her story in 16th century Rajasthan, rather than the 4th to 6th period in which Vatsayan is supposed to have written this elaborate, categorised treatise on sex. The languorous telling of this tenuous story has far too many such anachronistic slip ups for them to by anything other than carelessness.

It is the tale of two young women, Maya (Indira Verma) and Tara (Sarita Choudhury) who are for ever yoked in an unequal relationship from childhood. Tara is the princess of noble birth who lets Maya, the lowly-but-never-humble serving girl, to play with her and also share dancing lessons. Maya is sick of wearing Tara's cast-oofs and waits to take revenge for all those humiliations of childhood and young girlhood. Maya, as befits her name, is innately more sensuous and everything about her - her undulating dance, proud yet beckoning stance, the sashaying walk which showcases even cast-off clothes to advantage - fits the exact requirements of a ramp model. The screen Maya exudes these 20th century attributes abundantly and most inappropriate for the spirit of the film! Naturally, the self-confident Maya puts the poor but pampered princess in the shade. Maya preempts Tara's bridal night when the powerful princes Raj Singh (Naveen Andrews) comes to wed the princess and is smitten by the serving maid rather than the bride.

The follows a tangled and boring tale of how Maya is exiled by the outraged king, then meets a strapping sculptor Jay Kumar, (Ramon Tikaram, playing his role like yet another ramp model) with whom she falls in love. Jay sees in Maya the model of his dream Padmini - the ideal woman to love and be loved by according to the Kama Sutra - and not so much a flesh and blood woman to love. Maya then becomes a surrogate daughter and ace disciple of Rasa Devi (Rekha, the only person who is comfortable with an convinced of her role and so conveys this conviction with ease. Rasa Devi is an ex-courtesan who teaches young girls and women the art and science of love and also the skills necessary to hold a man. Raj Singh finds Maya - this prematurely debauched man can never forget her after that first night - and is ensconced as his chief concubine. The legal wife Tara is humiliated as retribution for all the slights Maya bore with such burning resentment. Al this is "told" to us rather than experienced cinematically. And this is true of most of the film.

Mira Nair is not satisfied with such a simple tale. She injects intrigue - sexual and political - and some jejune philosophising to "elevate" the statuesque poses her actors strike to illustrate the various sexual positions. They go through this routine like soulless mannequins, now turning on the smouldering grace, now swooning in languorous bliss, then claw the lover's back in a sexual frenzy as the camera frames clasped the hennaed feet. It is all so artificial and passionless. There are no warm flesh tints and everything looks rather monochromatic despite the gaudy jewels and gauzy clothes.

If there is one redeeming feature in this excess of careless silliness, it is the director's attempt to bring out the schizophrenia of Hindu society where a woman is a piece of property passed on from father to husband and sexual chastity makes the marriage dead. The only free beings are the ganikas - the skilled courtesans - who can enslave men while also giving free expression to their own sexuality. The Hindi version cuts short the sequences where Maya gives Tara lessons on the art of giving sexual pleasures. The film may look abrupt with this excision but is sure, going by the rest of the film, that it was expressly catered to titillate a western audience. Simulated lebianism is part of the cabaret act and Mira Nair gives it to them, gift-wrapped as Eastern exotica..

The trouble is, unlike the Japanese and Chinese filmmakers, Indian directors are uncomfortable and unconvincing when depicting the passion and pain of sexual love. Mira Nair opts for stylisation - and that too not consistently as a way out. The end result is unsatisfactory. It denies orgasmic pleasure for those looking for exotic soft porn and disappoints cineastes is search of a new idiom to express an ancient erotic sensibility in contemorary terms.