Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1995)

  In case you couldn't tell, this was the Christy pick for July.  

I wanted to like it.  I really did.  I wanted it to be sexy, almost borderline porn.  It's not.

But it's not for lack of trying.  There are so many smoldering glances I'm a little surprised the film didn't melt.  Both the main female characters get naked, and not just topless, but the full merkin.  Plus, Kama Sutra is part of the freakin' name.

Still, it falls flat for me.

Maya (Indira Varma) is the lower caste companion to Tara, a princess.  Tara has a typical spoiled attitude and treats Maya like shit to cover the fact that she actually feels jealous because the poor girl is prettier and more talented.  Then Tara marries a neighboring king (Naveen Andrews).  During the pre-wedding celebrations, Maya ends up sleeping with Tara's man a couple of hours before the wedding.  Tara goes off with her new husband and no one is the wiser, except for Tara's creepy-ass hunchback brother Bikky.  He keeps his mouth shut until Maya turns down his marriage proposal.  Then he tells everybody and gets her thrown out to wander the countryside.

She ends up staying at a temple and meets a local sculptor named Jai.  Jai takes her to his friend who runs a courtesan school.  Maya and Jai date until Jai freaks out and dumps her because she inspires his work too much.  Probably confounded by how stupid that reasoning is, Maya decides to become a courtesan and ends up getting picked up by the same king that married her friend.  Who also happens to be Jai's half-brother, since his mother was a courtesan in the old king's harem.  Tara isn't exactly pleased to see her, even less so when her mother-in-law gleefully informs her that EVERYONE knows the king fucked Maya before the wedding.

I suppose the "love story" portion of the plot comes in here because the king is obsessed with Maya and hates his wife, his wife is obsessed with him and hates Maya, Maya is obsessed with the sculptor and hates the king, and the sculptor is obsessed with Maya and hates the king.

I don't know. 

Indira Varma I recognized from the second season of Human Target which was cancelled because it was on FOX.  She did a good job there and I can't fault her here in her debut.  She's undeniably pretty and she has a easy way of showing a combination of naivety and mischief that works well in this role as a sexual ingenue.  My only problem is that her character had a tendency to whine like a saw-blade, which I found obnoxious.  I've never seen the chick that plays Tara in anything else so I have no idea if she's a good actress or not. 

Naveen Andrews survived (almost) 6 seasons of Lost playing an Iraqi so I know he can act.  My problem with him was that he was so made-up it didn't look natural.  He needed a few years on a desert island to weather him up a bit. 

The costumes, jewelry, and cinematography were gorgeous but, for sex appeal, you'd be better off watching Cinemax.