Aishwarya Rai: Loads of Prejudice

Bride and Prejudice really looks and feels like Gurinder Chaddha's slightly disjointed nostalgia trip to India. Far removed from the finer nuances of Jane Austen's novel, the film is like a cross between Monsoon Wedding and Bhaji on the Beach - laden with songs, Indian marriage rituals, a mixed cast and lots of NRIs.

The film opens with a shot of Aishwarya Rai perched prettily on a tractor with the Golden Temple in the backdrop - and then flits backward and forward without cinematic logic - to Los Angeles and London, and back again to Amritsar. The sole purpose of the plot (and also Nadira Babbar who plays Mrs Bakshi or Mrs Bennet of Austen's novel) is to get two eligible girls from Amritsar, Jaya (Namrata Shirodkar) and Lalita (Aishwarya Rai) good NRI matches... and the matches arrive in the shape of Darcy (Martin Henderson) and Balraj (Naveen Andrews) as the groom party in a Punjabi marriage.

While Darcy looks down at Amritsar and its "eligible" girls as a typical White Man from the West would, Lalita and her father (Anupam Kher plays Mr Bakshi/Mr Bennet) defend India as the land of opportunity and promise during inaneconversations at the dining table, the swimming pool, and the drawing rooms of Amritsar, LA and London - not necessarily in that order.

However, this same "I love my India" attitude does not stop the same Bakshi family from letting one of their daughters perform a typical "snake" song and dance number on the young NRI bachelors who are invited to dinner or from chastising Lalita for rejecting the inane Silicon Valley techie whom her friend readily accepts.

Through imagery, dialogue and characterisation, Chadha seems to perpetuate the same "image" problem that India suffers from as a Third World nation full of poverty, naked sadhus and snake charmers. Where Chadha slips up most is in the dialogue department - while Austen's novel is about witty conversations, about intelligent women courting crème de la crème of the British landed gentry - the novel is like a slapstick parody of Balle Balle desperately trying to grab a slice of LA.

Ash seems positively out of sync as the sharp-tongued Liz Bennet and is not a patch on Martin Henderson's Darcy, who is suave, gentleman-like and soft-spoken, like his counterpart in the novel. Ash also needs to shed a few kilos to justify her statue at Tussaud's, though Namrata Shirodkar surprises audiences in a smart cameo role as the Ash's sister in the film.

As for Chadha, this surely is not the director we know in Bend It Like Beckham. As for the Oscar nominations, Chadha surely knows that badly packaged NRI-bashing is the last thing that sells these days.●