Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love is a refined and sensual film, which overflows with love. Don't get any strange ideas, there's nothing sinful here. It's a love story, full of steamy scenes but which are very tied to the story.
The heroine is a girl who has had a strong sensuality since she was a child, Maya, and she becomes friends with Princess Tara, the two girls grow up together, while the first will end up being the most skilled courtesan who will become the king's favorite, the second will become his wife.
A film that in its homeland was censored and followed by a scandal of considerable size, in other countries there was not all this clamor, and yet there is a refined sensuality during the viewing of the film.
There is nothing vulgar, but rather, the director has the accuracy to involve the audience in an extraordinary love story, because the film refers to the philosophy of the Kama Sutra which is not as you think, but in India it is considered a sacred text on the love between a man and a woman and their life together, as the woman who will make Maya the most skilled courtesan says.
But the day she falls in love with Jai Kumar, she begins to realize that the king will divide them if he were to discover their story. You can watch the film with pleasure, especially because the story is intriguing. It talks about love, it talks about lust in a refined and never vulgar way, always keeping tied the double thread of feelings that binds us all.
Mira Nair carefully avoids anything that could weigh down the film, and she does well. She puts two women from the beginning who will be rivals once they grow up. First friends, then they will share the man whom Tara will marry, and with whom Maya will make love with before the wedding. She will pay the price of that choice, when she will understand that the strength of feelings sweeps away everything else.
A refined film based on the feminine sensitivity of a director who proves capable of telling a story, and keeping the viewer glued to the seat, and sorry if that's not enough.
Love is beautiful and also tragic. This is the lesson that Maya will learn the hard way, as the man she shares with her ex-friend will now become the shadow of a human being taken by the vices and dissoluteness of his position. Instead of thinking about the people, he thinks only of his pleasures, completely different from the great lesson about life and love that Maya has learned the hard way.
Contrary to what the title might suggest, this is not an erotic film and is not its main theme. On the contrary, it is only used as a means to develop the story of two friends/enemies who belong to different castes and who learn and exploit the rules of the Kama Sutra in completely different ways (which, by the way, is a book about couples and marriage in general).
The film aims to introduce actress Indira Varma but Sarita Choudhury's performance is far better and she has a haughty and elegant beauty that suits her role as a princess first and then as a queen.
It's strange to see a young Naveen Andrews on the screen, not yet fresh from the success of Lost (the film, in fact, dates back to 1996), beardless and perhaps not yet fully formed as an actor.
It must be said that for its time this was a film that risked a lot to tell an Indian vision to the Western world, and this not only because the film was almost completely ignored, enjoying a censorship worthy of that of Japanese manga.
