Kama Sutra

Once a graduate sociology student at Harvard making documentaries under MIT's Richard Leacock, Mira Nair quickly dashed away from the contemplative Cambridge nonfiction film world to direct feminist-style documentaries for Indian television. Moving adeptly to fiction, she made the popular but somewhat overrated Salaam Bombay! (1988) and the somewhat underappreciated Mississippi Masala (1991). However, Nair has never produced a disaster prior to Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love.

Who will venture to this plodding, pseudo-16th-century saga of estranged childhood friends, Tara (Sarita Choudhury) and Maya (Indira Varma), one of whom becomes a frigid, unwanted wife of a womanizing king (Naveen Andrews) and the other a courtesan slut? Only those who crave some arthouse-style skin and a decathlon of vigorous sex. With voyeurs in mind, Nair elbows her good-looking heroines into a couple of exploitative, softcore entanglements. Otherwise, the movie is a dreary adult fairytale not quite bad enough to be enjoyable camp or inventive enough to compete with a thousand zany popular Indian melodramas. Worse, you won't learn any new kinky positions: read the original erotic text instead. At the Avon.

-- Gerald Peary