BANGALORE: A new trend is emerging in Indian cinema that fuses the language of Hollywood with the accent, slang and emotions of India.
Films in Indian English, or Indlish as it is popularly known, appeal to the rapidly growing numbers of young people who speak English, widely seen in India as a prerequisite to securing jobs and getting on.
Three film-makers based in Bangalore hope that 20 Plus, their take on the experiences of a confused young man released on June 22, will confirm that movies in the new genre are bankable.
The film's hybrid language has characters addressing each other as machan, for instance, which strictly means brother-in-law in Tamil, but is also used to mean "pal".
Made on a shoestring budget, with the film-makers themselves going about to put up posters, "20 Plus" revolves around the experiences of director Arjun Menon.
Menon, 25, rejected conventional career options and parental pressure to plunge into movie making. His protagonist, too, wants to make films and faces fierce opposition from his family.
"We figured there was a huge vacuum between Hollywood or Bollywood," Abhay Toshniwal, the film's 30-year-old executive producer, told Reuters.
HYDERABAD BLUES
The film-makers were inspired by the success of Hyderabad Blues, a film in English that charts the ups and downs of a US-based Indian after he returns home, he added.
The autobiographical Hyderabad Blues, released in 1998, and directed by Nagesh Kukunoor, told of a young man torn between the cultures of India and America. Funny and poignant by turns, the movie defied box-office odds.
"There was always a sense of dissatisfaction (among us) after seeing a Hollywood or Bollywood movie," Toshniwal said.
"Hyderabad Blues hit the nail hard," he added, saying the film drove home to his generation that it was possible to make a film on their lives in India, but in English.
Kukunoor later made Rockford, which depicts boarding school nostalgia. Other film-makers have stepped in to address an urban or expatriate audience that hankers for movies about Indians in a variant of English called Indian English, or Indlish.
Varied in quality, style and themes, the films have a common thread in trying to address English-speaking Indians.
English August deals with an Anglophile bureaucrat yanked out of his familiar milieu when the government sends him to a remote rural location, while Split Wide Open charts the urban travails of a gay man.
Dollar Dreams tells of ambitious young Indians yearning to work in the United States. The term became a popular catch-phrase this year after a technology slowdown hit Indian workers there.
WARY DISTRIBUTORS
But the films have drawn mixed response, and the genre has yet to establish itself commercially.
The bulk of Indian films offer escapist fare for people struggling with grinding poverty. Indians go to the movies to escape the worries that plague their waking hours, and not for a slice of real life.
Bollywood distributors prefer to bet on big stars, jazzy sets, catchy songs and family drama themes that appeal to India's vast masses. "20 Plus" has little of any of this.
So financiers and distributors for alternative films are not easy to find. The makers of 20 Plus dipped into their own pockets and called on their families for the three-million-rupee budget, or about a fifth that of a commercial film.
"There's no sex, no exploding cars and no running of stars through meadows," said Ryan Lobo, the 27-year-old who plays Arjun, the protagonist. "The script is minimalist."
Distributors thought the movie had promise but have chosen to wait for the Bangalore release, Toshniwal said.
"I think it will do very well with the youth," he said.
Initial response has been mixed, with the country's leading newspaper, the Times of India, rating the film "average".
"All in all, the movie offers a lot of laughs, especially if you are familiar with the campus scene in Bangalore," critic Nirmala Rao said. "And of course, the lingo."
The film takes its distinctive voice from its youthful creators' disillusion with what they feel are the stereotyped aspirations of the good life their parents envisioned for them.
"You follow your dreams and die, or jump into a train to MBA-land," Menon joked. "My mother is a doctor and my father is in the merchant navy."
Toshniwal is an engineering drop-out who hails from an industrial family. Lobo abandoned a master's course in biology in the United States. {Reuters}
After reigning over the universe, Indian beauty queen Lara Dutta now has set her sights on Hollywood and says she has been cast to act in a film to be made by the producers of the US sci-fi thriller Matrix.
"I was cast in New York last month by a casting company for a film to be directed by (Matrix producers) the Cohen brothers," Dutta told Reuters.
The New York-based leggy beauty, who handed over the Miss Universe crown to the new winner in Puerto Rico last month, said the Cohens asked for her to audition after spotting her at a charity event at luxury retailer Sak's Fifth Avenue in New York.
"It (the film) is an incredible concept and has a lot of Indian culture in it."
She said she had also been asked to act in "a fun, romantic film" being made by a well-known Hollywood producer whose name she could not disclose.
The US talent agency Wilhelmina, which represents Dutta, is also scouting roles for her in other Hollywood productions.
Dutta says she is excited about her transition from beauty queen to Hollywood actress and expects to start shooting by the end of this year. "I've been extremely lucky with things falling into place," she said.
Dutta is as keen on being behind the camera as in front of the lens and has enrolled for a master's degree in journalism and film-making at New York's Columbia School of Journalism.
Depending on her acting commitments, she will start the two-year course this fall or next spring.
Dutta also said she was open to offers from Bollywood that she could "identify with".
She added that during her reign as Miss Universe she had got to know U.S. golfing sensation Tiger Woods and done media tours for his foundation which provides sports scholarships to children.
"He's pretty much in touch with reality. He has great parents who keep his feet planted on the ground," she said. (Reuters)
If June was the month of resurrection in Bollywood, July promises to be all about new awakenings.
In June, Gadar and Lagaan turned around several carefully preserved myths of Hindi filmmaking. Gone is the belief that films with a historical or counter-contemporary relevance are unacceptable to the audience.
The films also resurrected the careers of two fatally sidelined directors. Anil Sharma of Gadar and Ashutosh Gowariker of Lagaan were reeling under their flop reputations.
Now they are being seen as directors who have infused new blood into the slumping fortunes of Mumbai cinema.
And now three new directors with fresh and totally antithetical visions are poised to make celluloid statements in the next two weeks.
Goldie Behl, the son of the late filmmaker Ramesh Behl, says his Bas Itna Sa Khwab Hai has shaped up exactly the way he had thought it would. The sweet coming-of-age film was earlier scheduled to be released July 13, but was brought forward by a week to avoid a direct clash between leading man Abhishek Bachchan and his father Amitabh Bachchan, whose eagerly awaited Aks opens July 13.
Directed by ad filmmaker Rakesh Mehra, Aks is being dubbed a supernatural thriller with the most stunning look and finish seen in Hindi films. The trade is hoping to see Aks score in the same league as Gadar and Lagaan.
While Goldie Behl has judiciously backed out of a competition with Rakesh Mehra, another new director, Anubhav Sinha, has decided to take on Aks headlong. Sinha's modestly budgeted love story Tum Bin featuring four newcomers in the lead is being released on the same Friday as Aks.
Says Sinha, "It wasn't my intention to take on Aks. Earlier Tum Bin was scheduled for July 6. But because of Gadar' and Lagaan we just couldn't get a proper chain of theaters. Now I'm very happy that my film is coming with Aks. Everyone will rush out of homes to see Bachchan and will probably see my film as well."
Sinha, who has made several music videos for singer Sonu Nigam and shot for the highly successful television serial Sea Hawks, says his film is a different kind of love story.
Next month two more very promising young directors, Gurudev Bhalla and Farhaan Akhtar, are making their screen debut with Sharaarat and Dil Chahta Hai, respectively.