UD: So spirituality is really a key aspect of the film?

MN: The key for me is actually a line we gave to the character Rasa Devi, which is that The Kama Sutra says the art of living is much more important than the act of love itself. And that was how I chose to interpret the whole film. Eros couldn't be just about the love scenes but it had to be about the banal. The mundane. For example, the aunt massaging the back of her niece is as sensual as, say, an erotic scene. That is the true nature of Eros.

UD: Then people should be made aware your film is not The Kama Sutra on film per se. . .

MN: Yes, the film is not the book. The book The Kama Sutra is amanual, and I've written an original screenplay The Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love. It is not a documentary on sexual positions. It's a tale about sexual politics. It's inspired by the book, but fortunately, I didn't have to report back to some Kama Sutra higher order!

UD: On one hand, the film makes a point of the importance of the higher, more spiritual aspect of love beyond just the physical act, but on the other hand, it's mostly discussed in the context of courtesans being trained to go off to Court to become professional sex objects. I'm wondering if some people might see that as a bit of a contradiction in terms . . .

MN: No, it's not just in the context of courtesans. Also wives. When Tara, the Princess, is being prepared as a bride on her wedding day, the women -- her aunts and her friends -- are teaching her what The Kama Sutra says to expect that night, her wedding night. So it's not just for courtesans. And even Rasa Devi says later to Maya, "Come live here with us, Maya. We train women to be courtesans or wives."

UD: So you meant for the film to show that dichotomy . . . ?

MN: Exactly. When the Queen Mother comforts Tara about the King loving Maya, she says, "You know, it happened to me. Rasa Devi was his courtesan. There are courtesans and then there are wives. There are many like her, but you are Queen." So that dichotomy is constant throughout the film. It's not just a question of being sex objects alone, but the option remains. You know, one of the things I like about The Kama Sutra is that it does not moralize or judge who is better, the courtesan or the wife. And of course, the irony I am trying to put forward is: in a certain way, is there a difference? Who are we to cast the first stone as to who is better?

UD: Why did you choose to set your film in the sixteenth century?

MN: Well, I set it then arbitrarily, only because I love the architecture of that time and that architecture still exists and we used it -- none of this film was shot in a studio, you know. But I must say that it is a fiction that the third century Kama Sutra was actually taught to kids of the 16th century. Mind you, it was certainly imbued in our culture, but I haven't any hard factual evidence that says that there were these schools or such teaching going on in the 16th century. In that sense, the film is not a museum piece, an anthropologically correct document in all ways. I did what I wanted to do. Helena [Kriel], my co-writer, was very inspired by Shakespeare for instance, so we were throwing around these allusions sometimes. But I was much more working off various classical Indian poets. And in using different sources as inspiration, I wanted to achieve, to a certain extent, a kind of mythic quality. A little bit larger than life.

UD: I know it is not your intention to be didactic in any way. But I'm wondering if the story of these two women comprises, along with everything else, the theme of women's empowerment?

MN: In a way. For me, Maya is empowered by two things. One, she has only serviced this king. He has no real power over her. And two, despite the physical passing away of her lover, she has achieved a higher level of understanding. She walks against the stream, on her own and now a fuller woman. And not defeated by the execution of her lover, she is ready to embrace the next chapter. And then there is Tara, who is a queen. I do not make that moral judgment that she is somehow lesser because she is a queen. She wishes to be the Queen. But in the mental torture which has imprisoned her throughout the whole film practically, she has achieved some kind of transcendence. Not just through acquiring sexual skills, but by the entire coming of age journey. You see, she know can ask, "Why was I so obsessed with this creature? I no longer am interested in him," thus transcending the neglect that has driven her to such despair. And the implication is that when her brother takes over, she could be the real power of the state.

UD: Did you make this film primarily for women viewers or everyone?

MN: It would be great if couples of any nature would see this film together. I certainly made it for everyone, but in testing the film, I know it works very well with women. In India, I just sold the film and I made it a contractual condition that three times a week, there must be women-only matinees. For women only. It's a practical way of saying to the world that this is not a fuck-fest. This is not a film meant for men to come and get off on. So this is one practical, business condition I have set which I hope will result in a completely safe area for women to go by themselves and see something and feel perhaps what I've been trying to say.

UD: That's India. What about here? Given how American culture is seemingly so hung up on sexuality, are you nervous about the U.S. release?

MN: Here, I am doing what I can in terms of publicity to inform people. In America, the media is such that people read a lot more about what they are going to see, so that they can perhaps clue into what I might be saying. And it depends a lot on the marketing. The studio is releasing the film as a kind of high-brow artistic film, rather than a smutty film. Actually, I have just gone blue in the face for four months in India, where they tried to cut out everything that was vaguely sexual. But I said this is a film about sexuality, so if you cut it out, it will not be the film I made. So I took them to court and won. In India, just now. And it took a long time.

UD: Did you have to cut or compromise in connection with your court case in India?

MN: Yes, but it was an enormous victory in comparison with what the censor had originally wanted, which was to completely cut the whole film beyond recognition. So what they allowed me to do was to reduce to a "flash" -- a flash is defined as four feet of film -- certain shots. Anyway, I fell the spirit of the film is intact. The only drastic cut that for me is a compromise is the erotic scene between Maya and Tara. It's virtually gone.

UD: Why make the film in English?

MN: It was my decision, mostly as a cultural experiment in a way. Because I think in English. And I wanted to see if I could make a profoundly Indian film in the language I think in. And I got the courage to do that through the best Indian writing in fiction which for me creates profoundly India words but in another language. I have to admit though that I just dubbed the film into Hindi and enjoyed rewriting the script in Hindi very much. And I feel it is a more complicated version and I like it better.

UD: How so more complicated?

MN: Because of the poetry of the language. I must say, I much prefer that. But anyway, doing it in English was just an experiment. Not a commercial consideration.

UD: What is it like shooting fairly graphic sexual material?

MN: Shooting a love scene is a very delicate affair. On the other hand, it is incredibly choreographed. Like any technical scene, you go to this place and you hit that mark. It's a question of remembering all the points you have to hit in terms of physical positioning. Of course, there's also a lot to be said about chemistry between actors. So that feeds into it as well. But you have no idea how tedious it is. It may take all day to shoot one minute of film. So it's a very delicate combination of choreography and chemistry.

UD: For a film about sexual openness, why no frontal male nudity when there is female frontal nudity? Isn't that falling into the standard Hollywood double standard?

MN: Like I said before, making a love scene is a delicate thing and I choreograph it fairly well with the actors before, but then you sort of let ithappen and see what is discovered. Nonetheless, I don't have an agenda or list saying I have to cover this and this and this -- I got to go to the pubic hair, then the genitalia -- I don't work that way. This is a question I am asked, but on an organic level of how to conceive a scene, [male frontal nudity] just didn't happen, it just wasn't interesting. For example, the posteriors of both of them were very beautiful in my view, in a visual sense. So that did happen. Or it was correct in the scene of the first seduction of Maya that the King should chose to enter her from behind because he was not really engaged in who she was. It was that kind of thing -- an act of revenge that had gone too far -- that is interesting. That is drama, that is what was happening in that scene, organically. For me to go and show you his penis -- that is not what is happening in that scene. So it is not an agenda-type thing, the way I see it.

UD: Which film directors have influenced you?

MN: Not entire bodies of work by particular directors. But I watch Kurosawa pretty closely, Scorcese often. Emil Kusturica is a special favorite of mine. Guru Dutt is a big favorite of mine, an Indian director from the sixties. And Kieslowski is a big favorite.

UD: I'm curious why you don't mention Satyajit Ray . . .

MN: Oh, I love Satyajit Ray's earlier work. I love the Apu Trilogy. The Music Room is one of my all time favorites. But I was just not thinking about those films in the context of my new film because the styles are very different. I am much more into density, I show much more of a circus in my movies. I always joke that my next movie will be two people in a room. But I never make it. I am naturally interested in density. I jam the frame.

UD: And Ray's films are simpler . . .

MN: Yes, and calmer. We loved each other, we were very good friends. Not friends in the sense of implying equality. It was not like that. But I knew him very well, and he just loved Salaam Bombay! and just after that he died.But we had a great solidarity. But I wasn't specifically thinking of any of his films when I made this film. Except The World of Apu. I remember looking at that while I was shooting. Well, I showed Indira [Varma] how to walk by showing her Pather Panchali, the end scene where the mother is walking in the monsoon through the bamboo forest. There is this amazing, beautiful sway of the hips, the Bengali walk is very particular. She patterned her walk on that walk.

UD: Has Calvin Klein contacted you about licensing on some of the clothes? It's gorgeous stuff.

MN: Do you think Calvin would?! I don't know. The Japanese are doing a big exhibition of all the costumes from the movie. And they're doing an art book. It is one of my private vendettas to hold the mirror up to the fact that Versace and Gaultier and all these people have gone to Indian clothes over the centuries, sort of ripped it off and created a slightly pastiche kind of an Indian line.

UD: Did you ever feel yourself being forced into the role of some sort of cultural ambassador?

MN: Yes. It is tough when you are an Indian in America and there are so few images out there about us on the screen here. I am always asked to provide all of it, you know? I speak a lot to Indian students at universities, and I tell them, "I can't do that. And I refuse to be an ambassador of my country here, because I'd be a lousy one, mostly. Because I am much more interested in the foibles of the human condition. I am just not that person." The only way that that can be resolved is for all Indians to do our own work and put ourselves out there to validate the multiplicity of our presence. But because there is so little and I am one of the few people doing it, I find myself being asked to do it all. And it is not entirely fair, nor is it possible.

UD: What's your next film?

MN: I'm just knocking around the ideas. It's a contemporary film in Bombay about a dubbing artist. She dubs Baywatch. A little portrait of contemporary India hit by globalization.

UD: Thank you very much, Ms. Nair.