SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Set in 16th century India, this movie depicts the story of two girls who were raised together, though they came from different social classes. Tara (Sarita Choudhury) is an upper-caste princess while Maya (Indira Varma) is her beautiful servant. The two girls are best friends, but an undercurrent of jealousy and resentment is caused by Tara's haughtiness, symbolized by the fact that Maya is given Tara's hand-me-down clothes and never anything new to wear.During filming in India, the name of the project was not revealed to government officials who would have denied the petition to film in India had it been called "Kama Sutra." Instead, it was called "Maya & Tara." Since government officials made many periodic visits to the set to ensure proper Indian film etiquette, the cast had to improvise fake scenes which avoided the nudity and sexuality central to the story. Upon completion, authorities screened the film and it was subsequently banned in India because of the erotic scenes that contained heterosexual as well as homosexual elements.What really caught my attention about this film was Naveen Andrews. At the time he made this film, he was unknown, and remained largely unknown after the film. But then he was a main character in "Lost". I wonder how many people went back to see his past work, as it would completely change the way they might see him. It is also interesting that he has been cast in roles as both an Indian and an Iraqi. (Andrews happens to be a British-born Indian.)

I came across this film quite randomly and expected something pretty intolerable, but with bewbs. Instead, I got beautiful cinematography and arresting visual content behind a very candid study of the difficulties of navigating human desire. Even in a culture with clear conventions and few inhibitions regarding the acts of love, relationships advance by trial-and-error, defying the participants' intents and expectations, elevating some while trampling others underfoot.The film at once delivers the exotic with its costumes, sets and dancing, and tells a timeless and easily recognizable human tale. Also, some very beautiful people take off their clothes =D

If a simple embrace between Richard Gere and Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty caused all that furor, it is no wonder that this film is banned in India and Pakistan.I really don't feel completely qualified to judge this film as it is the first Indian film I have seen, and probably wouldn't even have tuned in except to see Lost's Naveen Andrews, who played the King. As Mel Brooks said, "It's good to be the King." He sits around smoking opium and has a nice harem, which included Maya (Indira Varma). I thought she was hot in the short-lived TV show 3 lbs. She is even hotter here and I can see why the King lost it over her.Sarita Choudhury plays the Queen and childhood rival of Maya. She starred with Denzel Washington in Mississippi Masala.The costumes and cinematography were outstanding.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS: Much more has been heard from Mira Nair since "Kama Sutra: A Love Story," but comparatively little from Indira Varma, who at the time the movie was made, may have been the most beautiful woman alive. Both clothed and naked, she is so gorgeous as to defy description. Nair and her co-author have devised a more-than-serviceable plot about the rivalry between the well-born Tara (Sirita Chouldhury) and her playmate and servant Maya (Varma). When Tara is betrothed to Raj Singh (Naveen Andrews), the jealous Maya seduces him prior to the wedding. After leaving her home to take advanced instruction in the Kama Sutra, Maya falls in love with Kumar (Ramon Tikarum), a sculptor, who rebuffs her after a consuming love affair because she so fills his imagination that he finds himself unable to create. Her heart broken by her lover's rejection, Maya becomes Raj Singh's courtesan and steels his love from Tara, the queen. Kumar finds he cannot live without Maya and finds her in the harem, where he is discovered and condemned to a spectacular and particularly brutal death. The dissolute Raj Singh is then overwhelmed by enemy forces led on behalf of Persia by Tara's hunchbacked brother, who had once sought Maya for his wife, and Maya wanders off into the Indian mists as the film ends. Indira Varma -- half English and half Indian by birth -- has subsequently enjoyed a rather minor career, mostly in television. But when this film was made, there was no one in Hollywood, Bollywood or any other center in the film making industry who was a more striking beauty.