Here comes her ‘Bride’

IN a fear-driven industry of sequels and spinoffs, Indian director Gurinder Chadha is a happy outsider as she awaits the U.S. release of her latest film, “Bride & Prejudice.”

After her successful 2002 soccer comedy, “Bend It Like Beckham,” Chadha dismissed encouragement to stick to a winning formula and began directing a hybrid romantic-comedy musical she wrote with her husband: It’s the story of a middle-class Indian woman and an American hotelier who fall in love, based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.”

Chadha laughs when she’s asked to describe how her film differs from the classic novel.

“It’s ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ meets ‘Hello, Dolly’ meets ‘Oliver’ with a whole dollop of ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ thrown in,” she says from her home in London.

It’s actually more like a bubble-bath commercial from the Far East. There are sunset silhouette shots, drawn-out glances between the costars and the occasional musical number that veers into the absurd. (During the standard musical montage, where the romantic leads “walk-along-the-shoreline-and-have-an-absolute-ball-doing-it,” Chadha has inserted a large gospel choir dressed in royal blue satin robes. And as the song hits full tilt, a pair of “Baywatch” look-alike lifeguards in red bathing suits run toward the water with their trademark red flotation device.)

“I’m afraid it’s very camp,” Chadha concedes. “It’s definitely not a movie for cynics.”

Regardless of whether audiences embrace Chadha’s new project, what is surely remarkable is that she has refused to do what some believe Hollywood expects from a woman of color -- play it safe.

After the worldwide success of “Bend It Like Beckham,” there were suggestions that Chadha follow it with another soccer-themed romance. She decided to take another path, though she admits she feels the weight of her choice: “Of course I’m self-conscious.”

The pressure isn’t simply self-imposed. Chadha and Mira Nair, director of this year’s “Vanity Fair,” starring Reese Witherspoon, are perhaps the best-known female directors from India. The two are leading a small but mighty contingent of filmmakers from the region who are hoping to bring some of Bollywood’s whimsy to Hollywood.

‘A DIFFERENT KIND OF SPIN’

Nandini SIKAND, a filmmaker and professor of film production at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pa., said the proof of Chadha and Nair’s success is evident in the responsibility Hollywood has given them. These are not small art-house movies.

“Bride & Prejudice” was shot in Los Angeles, India and the United Kingdom and cost $17 million and has already performed well in England. Chadha’s next directorial project is the prequel to the 1960s TV sitcom “I Dream of Jeannie.” A project by Out of the Blue

“What’s really interesting about her work is that she attempts to take certain themes that people are wrestling with, but she doesn’t give it the pat immigrant treatment,” said the New Delhi-born Sikand. “She creates a different kind of spin. It’s not the simplistic immigrant story in mainstream Western values. It’s not the static kind of East-meets-West nonsense.”

Miramax has released a trailer that relies on a colorful sample of several group dance scenes, narrated by voice-over, to lure audiences with the “spectacle appeal,” said Gary Faber, senior vice president of marketing for Miramax.

“Bride & Prejudice” is set to open Christmas Day in the top 25 U.S. markets, but Miramax will refrain from emphasizing the singing, even in musically savvy L.A. and New York.

“The musical numbers are not going to be at the forefront of the campaign,” Faber said.

That’s because selling a Bollywood-influenced musical means piquing audience interest in a genre that, for the most part, lies outside its comfort zone.

The movie’s “Hollywood meets Bollywood” nature defies easy categorization, and it made for a final editing process that was more grueling than anything Chadha had endured before, said Craig Pruess, who has written the music for all of Chadha’s films for the past decade.

“It was a bit of a roller coaster of a project because of the studio and the test screenings,” he said. “It was a very different ride from ‘Bend It Like Beckham.’ All her films are overlength, and then they get cut. But nothing like ‘Bride & Prejudice.’ ”

Miramax’s Faber denied that the editing process was rocky and said the film tested well in New York as well as with suburban New Jersey audiences.

The one audience Miramax does not need to tailor its campaign for is the Indian community.

For that group, Faber said, market penetration can be achieved with two names: Chadha and the movie’s ravishing starlet, Aishwarya Rai. Rai won the Miss World contest 10 years ago and has gone on to become one of the biggest names in Bollywood. She plays the heroine of “Bride & Prejudice,” Lalita Bakshi.

In keeping with the decorum of Bollywood, where she reigns supreme, Rai held on to her “no-kissing clause.” The result is that scenes of passionate tension are resolved with pony-like nuzzling and comforting pats on her shoulder blade by costar Martin Henderson.

“Most Bollywood films don’t have any sex or nudity in any shape or form,” Chadha said. “Very rarely is there even kissing -- never tongues with exchange of fluids. I wanted to uphold that tradition.”

A SUBCONTINENTAL YENTA

The film is based in Amritsar, a medieval town in the north of India, where the four lovely Bakshi daughters live with their parents. Mrs. Bakshi has devoted her middle-aged life to pairing her daughters with wealthy Indian husbands.

“Stand straight. Smile,” she tells them as the young women line up to meet an Indian-born bachelor who has flown in from L.A. to find a wife. “And don’t say anything too intelligent!”

But Lalita, the second oldest, has no intention of participating in an arranged marriage. At the same time, she is proud of India and thinks the country needs time to develop after years of colonial British rule. It makes sense, then, that her only love, to quote Shakespeare, is sprung from her only hate. She takes an immediate dislike to the fair-skinned, upper-class Will Darcy -- an American hotel heir played by Henderson.

Darcy has come to Amritsar with the intention of buying a nearby hotel, and in an attempt to flirt with Lalita he continually antagonizes her. On his first night, Darcy cautiously picks at the food for fear of getting what he calls “Delhi belly.” He tries to charm Lalita by joining in the local dance but offends her when he remarks, “It looks like you screw in a lightbulb with one hand and pet the dog with other.”

Despite it all, Lalita find herself falling in love. The film jumps from India to London to L.A., and at one point Darcy and Lalita do what no star-crossed pair ever seem to be able to arrange in real life: They bump into each other at the gate of a transatlantic flight for which they are both holding tickets.

Darcy, of course, is in first class, while the Bakshi family is in coach. Theirs is a love hindered by unavoidable issues of class, race and nationalism.

In a cunning sendup of Leona Helmsley, Marsha Mason makes a cameo as Darcy’s overbearing mother. She tells the Bakshi family that while she has always been fascinated with India, she has never been there.

“With yoga and spices and Deepak Chopra and wonderful Eastern things” in the U.S., she says, “I suppose there’s no point in traveling there anymore.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Lalita shoots back. “People haven’t stopped going to Italy just because Pizza Hut’s around the corner.”

These heavy themes are lightened by songs. Not just songs, but dancing too. And not just dancing, but dramatizations of the lyrics a la “Beauty School Dropout” in the 1978 film of the musical “Grease.”

“I’m sure it won’t be some people’s cup of tea,” Chadha said. “Some people don’t like musicals. Also, I’m doing something new. Some people like new things. Some people don’t.”