"Kama Sutra" A Film Review by Linda Lopez McAlister on "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL August 2, 1997 It has taken a long time for Mira Nair's latest film, "Kama Sutra" to reach Tampa and it will be gone in a flash. It opened at the Tampa Theater last night and will be shown once more, tonight, at 10:00 p.m. It played elsewhere around the country several months ago. It is, I think, worth making the effort to see. As you may know, Mira Nair is a Harvard-educated Indian woman filmmaker. Her biggest U.S. hit film to date was "Mississippi Masala" that explored the lives of an Indian family running a motel in Mississippi and their interactions with the African American community. Now, as in her earlier film "Saalam Bombay," Nair returns to her native land to undertake one of the most ambitious film projects I've ever seen A woman filmmaker take on. It is a period piece of epic proportions with sumptous settings, lush photography, crowds, fight scenes, elephants, camels, invading armies--the works. And yet, despite all these elaborate trappings it remains an intimate, character driven story that is rich in character development and emotional truth and ancient wisdom about life and love. "Kama Sutra" is, of course, the title of a famous ancient treatise on love that elaborates great numbers of sexual positions. One of the enlightening points brought out in the film is that it is more than just a sex manual and has much more to say about the emotional and spiritual levels of love as well as the physical. Even in the 16th century, the time at which the story in the film takes place, the "Kama Sutra" was an ancient text, but was used to teach young women the ways of love. Old women, as well; one of the touches I liked was that in the classes taught by a former chief courtesan to the King one of the students was an older woman with long white hair. The story concerns two young girls, one a princess and the other an orphaned servant girl who are best friends and playmates, though the differences in their class status make for some resentments since the servant girl, Maya, is always getting the hand-me-downs from the Princess. Maya, however, is far more gifted in the art of classical Indian dance, especially in the dances that are for the specific purpose of attracting and arousing a man. When they grow up the same is true, and when the young King arrives in the Court to marry the Princess, it is Maya to whom he is attracted. When the Princess sees this she humiliates Maya, who then retaliates by seducing the King just before the wedding ceremony, so that once in her life the Princess will have her hand-me-down instead of vice versa. When this is discovered Maya is expelled from the court and wanders homeless through the community until she meets a young man who is the sculptor to the King and who carves those beautiful and elaborate Indian erotic sculptures that you've undoubtedly seen pictures of. He takes Maya to the compound where the former King's chief courtesan now runs a kind of boarding school for future courtesans and wives, teaching the wisdom of the Kama Sutra. Maya and the young sculptor, who is, in fact, half brother to the young King, fall in love. But the Kama Sutra teaches that the path of love never runs in a straight line, whether among royalty or among commoners and much intrigue and misunderstanding ensue before they can both recognize their love for each other. Meanwhile, the Princess, now the Queen, is scorned and ignored by her increasingly dissolute husband and becomes distraught and despairing when Maya returns to the court in full royal favor as the new chief courtesan. If this description makes it sound like a totally male-identified , primarily heterosexual society, it is; but the film depicting this is not. There is much mutual respect and love among the female characters in the film and eventually Maya and the Queen reconcile and rekindle the love for one another they had as children. It is a fascinating tale of women's lives in a society that is so completely male dominated and that still, in those women-centered spaces where the art of love is taught, women learn a kind of wisdom that can lead them to a kind of independence and self-love that belies the belief that they must remain helpless victims with no will of their own. "Kama Sutra" is a very unusual and enjoyable film. I'd advise you to spend this whole weekend at the Tampa Theater, actually, seeing the Japanese comedy "Shall We Dance?" tonight at the early show, Kama Sutra" tonight at 10:00, and "The Watermelon Woman" on Sunday or Monday nights (but Sunday is the big WMNF benefit screening). Not a bad film program for a summer weekend when the multiplexes are filled with Spawn and other such depressing summer fare. For the WMNF Women's Show, this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film. . , Copyright 1997. All rights reserved. Please do not copy or r reproduce this review without permission of the author: mcaliste@chuma.cas.usf.edu.