Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1997)

Wonderful Movie

To me, this movie is perfection.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This visually beautiful movie has a 6.0 rating? The story is both interesting and a little complex. The acting is excellent and the characters realistic and appealing. The pacing is right on and the movie does not drag. This is hardly a visual guide to the Kama Sutra but it is still a very sexy picture. Is the low rating due to pornographic disappointment? As my wife and I watched we were reminded of how tenuous love can be. A single moment of fear or misunderstanding can put a true love affair in jeopardy. This happened to us 43 years ago; fortunately we had a second chance. Not everyone does.Searching for a stunningly photographed timepiece featuring characters you can relate to, a love story, and a bit of eroticism? You're going to like this film.

Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996): Dir: Mira Nair / Cast: Naveen Andrews, Sarita Choundhury, Roman Tikaram, Indira Varma, Rekha: Looks more like a documentary than a feature film and sometimes contains the feel of a porn flick. It regards the confusion between love and lust and the physical and emotional. Set in India where it follows the sexual conquests of two males towards a woman named Maya. Actually it is two sisters who are the initial competitors. One is set to marry a ruler while the other is given to his courtesan. Maya seduces the ruler in a spite of revenge and flees. She encounters a tribesman with a chisel and he carves her image as a statue. The ruler will pay him for her identity. Laced with sex, sex and more sex before arriving at a very fatal conclusion. Beautiful music and stunning set pieces with fine directing by Mira Nair. Fine cast includes Naveen Andrews as the vengeful Prince whom will never receive the love he seeks due too his pride. Sarita Choundhury is Tara, Maya's sister. Roman Tikaram is the tribesman who faces fatal consequences for his dance with erotica. Indira Varma plays Maya whom must live with her actions. Rekha plays some sort of teacher of Kama Sutra. So, basically, she is a sex education representative. It is a film about sacrifice but Kama Sutra means various acts of lovemaking. Is this film suppose to be a guide? Score: 6 / 10

'Kama Sutra' has a story that would be right at home on a daytime soap opera. I say that as a criticism because both tell meaty stories and one is just as frivolous and silly as the other. Both are smooth and lovingly photographed, everyone is beautiful and everybody seems locked in some form of sexual intrigue or another.With a title like Kama Sutra you wouldn't expect anything less then eroticism and sexual politics. The story takes place in 16th century India and centers around two women a servant named Maya (Indira Varma) and the Princess Tara (Sarita Choudhury) who have been friends since childhood. Tara has been groomed from birth to be the wife of a king and is chosen by King Raj Singh (Naveen Andrews). The night before the wedding Maya seduces the king on the theory that she has always had to follow Tara to get anything and now Tara will have something that Maya has had first.Angered, Tara casts Maya out of the village. Wandering in exile she is caught up in the gaze of a sculptor who makes her his model and his lover but later decides that she can't be both and would rather she just be his model. Uh-huh. It's about here that the movie's title comes into place because Maya meets a woman who has a school that teaches the ancient art of the Kama Sutra. She proves to be adept at the ancient art that combines dance, art, philosophy and sex and uses her teachings to make her way back into the court.From Mira Nair I expected a robust story of sexual intrigue and character study but alas she hasn't created a film that is up to her best works like 'Mississippi Masala' or 'Salaam Bombay'. The story is just a clothes line on which to hang a lot of gorgeous bodies and erotic revelry. It begins with a joyfully sexy story and by the end 'Kama Sutra' doesn't have a brain in it's pretty little head.

I believe that I would like to place a moment of blame on this film. Due to the title alone, I was nervous about viewing it with the windows open. Prior to my viewing, I was unaware that it was directed by famed director Mira Nair, and was fully prepared to draw my blinds as I embarked on this film adventure. The title was Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, what was I to assume. After watching nearly two hours of this film, I was disappointed. I was upset with not only the lack of commitment to the characters, the tired storyline, and the anti-climactic ending, but also due to the lack of sexuality surrounding this film. "Kama Sutra" headlines this feature, but alas, it is not the central focus, and this is where I believe Nair failed us and my moment of blame was born. I would like to make it clear that I did not desire a film of pornography, I knew that this was a "mainstream" film, but I did want something deeper and centered around the art of "Kama Sutra" instead of just another cliché story of rival girlfriends. I realize that I am generalizing the overall theme of this film, but at the core of this movie it was not about the art of sex, but instead the decay of man.I did not like this film. I understood this film to be considered an adult fairy tale, but alas, I never saw the elements of a fairy tale in this story. Written in part by Nair, I saw this film as her opportunity to demonstrate the power of a woman's sexuality over even the strongest of men. In a very small part she succeeded, but her attempt to build this opportunity failed with her characters. When you make a film centered on love, or the passion of its act, you must hire actors that will give the audience that sensation. The audience must feel the sweat, the energy, the excitement of what is happening on screen or it will fall swiftly into just another Skin-a-Max midnight movie. Sadly, Nair could not accomplish this. When her characters, whether it was Maya, Tara, Raj, or even Jai, were "forced" into the "Kama Sutra" part of the film, it felt scripted and staged. There was no instant passion between these characters, which destroyed, utterly ripped from its roots, any attempt that Nair had to create the theme of sexual independence. Without the fire behind her actor's eyes, the rest of the film fell to the wayside as just your "average" film.Nair had another opportunity to capture back her audience with this film, but she never took it. Nair could have pulled a Gandhi-esquire moment for us by countering the horrible acting with beautiful images of India. Nair could have coupled the beauty of "Kama Sutra" with the beauty of the land, thus creating at least one moment of visual eye-candy for the viewers, but again, she did no such thing. The few moment of fresh scenery that we had seemed like it came from National Geographic stock footage. I realize that she was actually in India, but what concerned me was that I didn't feel like I was in India. Throughout the film I realized that I was sitting on my couch watching bad acting with recycled images of India. I was nowhere close to being swept away by a lavish love story. Wait. This wasn't an original lavish love story. This was nothing more than the cliché story of two friends whom find themselves fighting over the same man with a foreign twist. Perhaps I needed more influx into India's culture or even more back-story on our smaller characters, but nothing took my breath away. The character's lack of passion cheated me, and now Nair's choice of scenery felt just as plastic.Finally, I would like to say that (without giving anything away); the ending was rather lackluster. Void of emotion to our characters and obvious cliché India images only strengthened the forgettable ending. Again, the title of this film was Kama Sutra, which invokes images of lust and passion, sadly the ending evoked nothing of the sort. There wasn't a care in the world for our characters, so why should we feel impassioned about them in the final climactic moments? I didn't. As I watched this film I felt as if I was on a Disney ride through India. The tracks were in place so my cart couldn't go off the forsaken path, while the robotic characters did what they were supposed to do without any surprises or excitement. The only character (and I hate to go back on this rant again, but it is the central reason this film fell hard) worth enjoying was that of Naveen Andrews, but I think it is because of his Lost connection. By the time the ending finally happened, I was sculpting my own story in rock and hoping that Hollywood would produce it.Overall, this film did have potential, but by giving it a name like Kama Sutra it over promised and ultimately did not deliver. Again, I would like to make it clear that I was not hoping for a heavily sexual film, but it needed to be a stronger point in the story than just a "quick-cut" or a side quest. Kama Sutra failed because of its characters and their obvious lack of devotion to the story. There were no surprises, there was no excitement, and there was no romance, just cliché plot points that you can see in any film across the fine Earth. Could Nair been more adventurous? This reviewer thinks so. She could have taken us off the beaten path, deeper within the darkness, but instead she glossed over the truth giving us a Kama Sutra that was more pastel than passionate.Grade: ** out of *****