Gurinder Chadha, who previously directed the wonderful Bend It Like Beckham, is giving Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice the Bollywood treatment. As the director said in an interview with BBC News Online, "Our version may have different cultures and settings but it's still about people marrying from different backgrounds."
Chadha's film, which has a budget four times that of Bend It Like Beckham, will stay faithful to Austen's original story for the most part. The Bennett family becomes the Bakshis, and they live in a modest Indian village. Mr. Darcy, who will be played by The Ring's Martin Henderson, is a wealthy American rather than a British socialite.
The story starts in the home of the Bakshi's, where the matriarch of the family has set out to find marriage matches for her four gorgeous daughters while a lavish wedding party is in the town. Instantly, this story's version of Elizabeth Bennett, Lalita (Aishwarya Rai) says that she will only marry for love, which naturally causes her mother no end of mental grief.
It's not long before Lalita meets the arrogant California snob Will Darcy, and there are instant sparks. Darcy sees Lalita as a naïve, small-town Indian beauty, and she sees him as off-putting and haughty. The pair varies from finding enchantment in each other's company to being suspicious of their motives. Though Lalita and Darcy's budding romance nearly falls prey to assumptions, back-biting gossip, and various coincidences and comedies of errors, pride and prejudice are both overcome so that love may conquer all in the end.
Unlike many of the past adaptations of Austen's novel, Bride and Prejudice will have several song and dance routines and will span several continents, which allows the director to explore global perception, or what various nations think about others. As a result, the film will have a unique combination of Western film pacing and the musical elements of Bollywood movies. And clearly, distributor Miramax has high hopes for the movie's prospects, slating it for a release right in the prime of awards season. (Kim Hollis/BOP)
Vital statistics for Bride and Prejudice |
| Main Cast |
Aishwarya Rai, Martin Henderson, Daniel Gillies |
| Supporting Cast |
Ashanti, Alexis Bledel, Marsha Mason, Naveen Andrews, Namrata Shirodkar, Indira Varma, Nadira Babbar, Anupam Kher, Meghna Kothari, Piya Rai Choudhray, Nitin Chandra Ganatra |
| Director |
Gurinder Chadha |
| Screenwriter |
Paul Mayeda Berges, Gurinder Chadha |
| Distributor |
Miramax |
| Trailer |
Click Here for Trailer
|
| Rating |
PG-13 |
| Screen Count |
30 |
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Talent in red has entry in The Big Picture |
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