May/June 2007
The Company of Mira Nair
The Indian filmmaker discusses her movies, her characters, and her own history.
Monsoon Wedding (2001)
Nominated for nine awards, including the Golden Globe. Won four awards, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Monsoon Wedding was supposed to be a meditation on all kinds of love. I wanted to contrast the grand, opulent wedding with a relationship that had no materialism, one that was based on nothing but a flower. The tent-man, Dubey, is looking through the window at the maid Alice (Tilotama Shome), who’s having a private moment of fantasy, dressing in the bride-to-be’s jewels, having her own Bollywood royal fantasy. That sense of play and cavorting is something I subject myself to very often. I guess my films have to have those moments, where people imagine for a second that they’re someone else.
Tilotama Shome, who had never acted before, has such an exquisite dewdrop face. The kind that you don’t see often, like a face from a Satyajit Ray film. When I looked at that face, I wanted to give her scenes that would make it come alive.
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