No dream sequence this: the Swiss now have their own Bollywood film

ZURICH, SEPTEMBER 7: Sonja is a waitress in a countryside restaurant in the Bernese plateau of Switzerland. Engaged to her boss, she has a secure life-plan. Until a Bollywood film crew lands up for a shoot. The highly gifted cook of the crew woos her relentlessly and soon she is faced with a dilemma — a choice between security and status on one side and passion and magic on the other...

Bollywood film crews have been coming to Switzerland for decades to shoot dream sequences or honeymoons. And now, Switzerland hits back with its own home-grown Bollywood film, Tandoori Love. Made in the Swiss German dialect and English, the film was premiered before a packed audience at the lakeside open-air theatre in Zurich last Saturday.

The film takes a comic look at the clash of two totally different, rather contrasting cultures. “I love Indian culture and its chaos,” says Oliver Paulus, writer-director of the film. “And you can imagine what happens when this chaos enters a Swiss village where everything is so perfectly organised.” He says he had often heard irate hotel and restaurant owners swear they would never again want to have an Indian film crew in their midst. But over the years this attitude has changed. People are more open-minded now and they see the advantage it brings — India is one of the fastest growing tourism markets for this country, thanks to Bollywood.

But with so many songs, such emotions and drama, Tandoori Love does come across as being in the same genre as the thousands churned out in Mumbai’s dream factory, with a few Swiss characters and situations thrown in.

Paulus chose the cast very carefully, subjecting even well-known actors to a screen test. Lavinia Wilson, a German actress, aspiring to make it big in Hollywood plays Sonja (pronounced Sonia). Vijay Raaz, whom we all know from numerous Hindi movies but remember most for his comic role in Monsoon Wedding, “is a marvellous actor,” according to Paulus. Shweta Agarwal (whom we know from TV serial Dekho Magar Pyaar Se) plays the tantrum throwing diva who, accompanied by her mom on shooting sets, is giving the director and the producer (played by Ganesh Yadav and Aasif Sheikh) constant jitters.

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