Perfumed Garden: Tales of the Kama Sutra

My girlfriend and I got the video in hopes of seeing an arousing movie. We were disappointed. The movie was slow, the storyline was okay, but wouldn't make sense if you didn't already know something about Karma and the Kama Sutra to begin with. The whole story could have taken up 30 minutes of film. If it did, it would have been better.

This movie on video interested me because it's shot in India, particularly Khajuraho and Jaipur, cities I will visit myself. It's a story about an American couple who have some Indian friends. The man is impotent but that doesn't bother his girlfriend even so very much. He goes to India to work at the famous erotic sculptures of Khajuraho.She goes with him.They meet a mysterious Indian lady (a role by a well-known Indian actress who played in "Little Buddha") who makes them acquainted with the Kama Sutra. This same actress is the main figure in a Kama Sutra story that is set 1000 years earlier. There she is a courtisane at the King's court. What this story of sex and broken vows has to do with the Kama Sutra does not become clear. There are some nude scenes, a total of 10 minutes of nudity (naked breasts of 4 women and only a few seconds full frontal nudity) but filmed in a highly esthetic way, that does not become vulgar. Nevertheless it's a disappointing film.It doesn't even show much of India or these temples in Khajuraho. It's not awfully boring but leaves you with a lot of questions.

This movie had it's ups and downs. I enjoyed the scenery in India and the way the people of India dressed, danced and all the things that make India so colorful and different. It acts on the religon and culture of India. But what this movie could have done without is the couple that traveled there. They were so annoying I forgot who they were. I know the man was named Micheal and he was having problems in his relationship with his girlfriend for God knows why she tries to make the relationship work out with Micheal as he tells her that he's leaving her and going to India to check out some Budahs. They decide to go and while they are in India they come across a strange lady that claims to be a reincarnation of a servant girl that once lived in a paradise garden with royal subjects. The girl in the past falls in love with another man and seduces him but there is no indication of what happened to them other than the fact that they fell in love. Centuries past and in comes Micheal and the strange lady stops at nothing to get him back. Micheal soon begins to think the lady is crazy for accusing him of being a reincarnated monk and she finds herself lost.

This was like a light dramatized classical theming of spiritual topics with a sensual overtone. I thought it was great on a number of levels including the spiritual, the understanding of east meets west, artistic and architectural notions, and not only the sensual, the sensual in terms of history and relationship values.

This film purports to be erotic entertainment, but is neither fish nor foul. It is an unnecessarily complicated mediocre story not very well told, and from my point of view, not erotic. It is `chick porn,' thus we see no genitals or intercourse, but spend lots of time on The Relationship. There is brief full (female) frontal nudity, but it is purely incidental. We have to make do with a reasonable helping of bare breasts, but they aren't doing anything either. There is so little of any kind of sex in this film that the invocation of the Kama Sutra is a fraud. By introducing mysterious India, its ancient non-Calvinistic religions and its famous sexual philosophy, this film had great potential as a `classy' erotic film for people with at least a high school education, but it never developed into anything.