Paris: Dance, music and humour Bollywood-style set in the heart of Paris make for a colourful world film premiere here Wednesday in a season proving hot for all things Indian.
"One Dollar Curry" by France-based Indian filmmaker, journalist and writer Vijay Singh takes a comic look at tolerance while lifting the curtain on an exotic side of the French capital unknown to many visitors.
The film is a joint French-Indian production and was filmed in English but is making its world premiere in France three weeks before it shows for the first time in India.
Its release coincides with that of a new album by "Pascal of Bollywood", or Pascal Heni, an extravagant Paris native who wears colourful shirts and made a
name for himself in India by singing hits from musicals in Hindi, Tamil and Bengali.
India is trendy at the moment in Paris -- look out for "Coffee India" in the hip district of Bastille, or "Punjabi Night" at the Hard Rock Cafe or all
things Indian on the Internet through radiomasala.net.
But "One Dollar Curry" is set in the French capital's
well-established home of immigrants from the subcontinent, the 10th district on the northern side, packed with grocery stores, restaurants, clothing stores and video rentals
with cheap "phone home" facilities, bringing colour and exotic spicy smells to the grey streets.
Its star however is Vikram Chatwal, a New Yorker whose family runs a chain of hotels and restaurants in the United States.
He plays Nishan, a young Sikh political refugee who hawks curry from a cart in the streets but claims to be related to a line of chefs who cooked for the great names of the world from the Moghul emperors to Winston Churchill and Michael Jackson.
Nishan attracts the attention of Nathalie, a stylish journalist looking for a story, but a budding romance is disrupted by the arrival of Yamini, Nishan's fiancee, and matters become somewhat complicated.
"One Dollar Curry", with music by Zakir Hussain, is the 52-year-old Singh's second feature film after "Jaya Ganga", which was a big hit in France.
"It's a crossover, appealing to French viewers as well as Indians, a somewhat philosophical comedy which mixes the genres," he says, admitting to being influenced by Mira Nair's 2001 feelgood smash "Monsoon Wedding".
But the movie is also rooted in Singh's own experiences.
"When I came to France in 1980 I got to know this district and saw it grow," he told AFP. "I also got to know many refugees -- there were sad stories and funny stories, and humour was a self-defence mechanism."
Paris is now home to more than 200,000 people from the subcontinent, according to Singh, including 25,000 each from the former French possessions of Pondicherry and Mauritius, 80,000 Sri Lankan Tamils and at least as many
Pakistanis, but only some 6,000 from other parts of India.
The release of "One Dollar Curry", a coproduction by the
state-owned television channel France 2 and India's Zee Network, comes only a week after French cinemagoers were introduced to Buddhadeb Dasgupta's 2002 film "A Tale
of a Naughty Girl."
And in a month's time it will be the turn of "Bride and Prejudice", the latest by Kenyan-born Indian maker of "Bend it Like Beckham," Gurinder Chadha.
Pascal Heni meanwhile is hoping for a success for his first album released in France, which combines songs from Indian melodramas with Hindi versions of French classics and even a snatch of Mozart's 40th Symphony.
