The backdrop of the Alps in a romantic Bollywood song triggered more than a memory of home in director Oliver Paulus’ mind. It also sowed the idea of “Tandoori Love, a delectable meeting between the worlds of India and Switzerland, through mediums that the director loved best, the Bollywood and Indian cuisine.
“Tandoori Love, a contender in the International Competition of the Cairo International Film Festival, unabashedly relishes in the exquisite colors and cuisine of India. As the movie is about the love between an Indian cook and a Swiss waitress, the story offers itself up to being subsumed by images of food.
The camera focuses on ingredients being artfully chopped, sliced and prepared, follows transformations that the food undergoes as it is cooked, and captures the love with which it is elaborately garnished and served. Early on in the film, Paulus has the audience eating out of the palm of his hand.
Despite it being a formulaic fairytale romance, careful research has gone into the making of the movie.
Paulus told Daily News Egypt that his research also included spending time with chefs from five-star hotels as well as the street-side in India, “It was a pleasure to cook with them.
While the movie itself is a plunge into Bollywood-like-cinema, the audience is introduced to its nuances, as to Raja (Vijay Raaz), with gentle ease. Like the European audience would, Sonja (Lavinia Wilson) reacts with bafflement to the gusto with which he professes love and breaks into a Bollywood musical number.
Their very first meeting takes place at the supermarket – a site of many revelations in the film. Raja immediately offers a cherry, “Ma’am you marry me, I’ll cook for you.
She obviously thinks he’s a crackpot, even more so when he enters into a full-blown song and dance, “Forget the cheese and honey . be my Rani.
Only gradually does the audience warm up to the charms of Raja and his concoctions, as it is with Paulus’ storytelling.
Not surprisingly, one viewer found it hard to swallow that a pretty Swiss-blonde would fall for Raja. Paulus concurred that while most Indian A-list actors looked more like Italian models, he chose Vijay Raaz because he was “believable as someone that “really looks like a cook.
The choice of Raaz, who gave a commendable performance as Raja, reflects also how the film wishes to be seen; it does not sell beauty, it wins love.
While Paulus does not pander to stereotypes, he does not shy away from them either.
The Indian actress, Priya (Shweta Agarwal), wants to play Heidi in the Swiss mountains. Raja too has to contend with various stereotypes. When Sonja discovers him trying the various products before buying, she informs him, “This is a supermarket, not a Turkish bazaar.
When Markus (Martin Schick) – Sonja’s boss and fiancé – gains more respect for him, he insists that Raja is Indian, but once enraged, Markus himself calls Raja “Tamil.
Inner jokes on the Indian film industry abound. Priya is portrayed as a spoilt starlet, chaperoned by her mother. While the actress dances in her gossamer sari, goaded to produce “more tears, more tears, the producer and director sit covered in jackets, well-protected from the sub-zero temperatures.
With the organized nature of Swiss life and chaotic reputation of Indian life and cinema, there was much apprehension, even off-screen, at the meeting of both cultures.
Yet, the connection was easy, even if shooting in India had to be “kamikaze because of the “chaos and dwindling finances, perhaps because India provoked an emotional connection.
In spite of its “simple recipes for movies, and unlike with Hollywood, Paulus confessed he was often moved to tears watching Bollywood flicks.
“Tandoori Love is a full-on embracing of the kitsch. You eat its sweetness whole, and with no grain of salt.
Paulus is inspired by Bollywood. “They do what they like to do, what they enjoy. I wanted to try to do that, be kitschy and loud. It’s what you never do in Switzerland. By the end of the movie, you even buy that Sonja walks out of the supermarket in Switzerland and lands in the arms of Raja in India in the span of one song.
Unlike many a film that saddles a spice with a hint of love, “Tandoori Love is a genuine feast of love produced out of a heart-warming recipe.
