Subhash K Jha

With the top honour at the Venice film festival under her belt, Mira Nair is preparing to release her international critical success Monsoon Wedding in India.

Many distributors in Bombay evinced a keen interest in Nair's satirical look at a typical Punjabi wedding in Delhi, which won the Golden Lion award at the Venice festival. Nair became the first woman director and first Indian to win the award in the festival's history.

Says Shravan Shroff of Shringar Films, "We were interested in acquiring the exhibition rights of Monsoon Wedding. But the price quoted was too high for us."

The Indian rights for Monsoon Wedding have now been acquired by a non-film company devoted to financial services called Eye Dreams, which reportedly purchased the film for whooping amount.

Monsoon Wedding's Indian release is slated for November 30.

The industry's reaction to the film remains unsure. Says a skeptical exhibitor, "None of Nair's films, except Kamasutra, have done well in India. And we all know why that did well."

There's a growing feeling in the film industry that NRI directors like Deepa Mehta and Mira Nair peddle Indian exotica to the West and are even honoured back home for doing that.

After her film on the widows of Varanasi, which was shelved, Deepa Mehta now busies herself with the fluffy romantic fantasy Bollywood Hollywood, starring Rahul Khanna and Lisa Ray.

But Nair seems to have journeyed in the opposite direction. Having sold exotica in Kamasutra to the West, Monsoon Wedding is a sincere heart-warming and uncluttered 'Indian' film, which actor Naseeruddin Shah describes as a 'reality check'.

While the average Hindi film romanticises and glamorises the Indian wedding, Nair goes behind the glitter to giggle at the grime.

Speaking from New York after the terrorist attack, Nair says, "Life is always intense, more so now than ever before. But normalcy has returned to New York's life. The one thing that we can do to life is to embrace it. This is exactly what my Monsoon Wedding says. It celebrates life by embracing it."

"This film is so close to my heart that I did not think it would be invited to festivals, let alone win such an awesome prize. I'm as overwhelmed by the recognition as everyone else in my crew," she adds.

Indo-Asian News Service

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