Ash is Mistress of Spices?
By Agence France-Presse
Apr 22, 2004, 14:24

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Former Miss World and popular Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai is lined up to act in a new crossover film being produced by Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha.

The film, Mistress of Spices, will be produced jointly by Chadha and Kintop Pictures of Los Angeles, but will be directed by Chadha's husband Paul Mayeda Berges, who makes his debut as a director.

"Gurinder and I will produce this film and we are talking to Aishwarya to do a role in this film too but so far there has been no commitment from her side," said Kintop Pictures president Deepak Nayar.

Hollywood trade magazine Variety quoted Chadha as saying talks are ongoing with the star. "There's no deal yet," Chadha said, "but she wants to do it and she wants to continue the relationship with us."

Mistress of Spices is a story of an Indian woman who runs a spice shop in San Francisco. She has mysterious powers to cure problems of her customers but when she falls in love with a lonely man who visits her store, she starts losing her magic. The movie is expected to cost 10 million dollars to make.

Rai stars in Chadha's latest movie, Bride and Prejudice, based on Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, which is also produced by Kintop Pictures. "The script for Mistress of Spices is ready and Paul will direct the film for certain but right now we have lot of work pending for Bride and Prejudice which we plan to release by late this year," Nayar told AFP.

"We plan to make Mistress of Spices completely in English. There will not be much Hindi or Punjabi spoken - as there was in Bend it Like Beckham," Nayar said. Berges assisted his wife in the Bride and Prejudice project, while he co-wrote and assisted in two of her other movies, What's Cooking and the highly successful Bend it Like Beckham, a British-Asian "crossover" film - a blend of Indian and Western cinema - which focused on a Sikh family living in Britain.

Berges has also directed a couple of shorts, including a documentary about his own experiences growing up as a Japanese American in Los Angeles. Variety quotes Chadha as saying her husband's American nationality is one reason he is a more suitable director for the movie than herself.

Rai was recently listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 most important people who matter to the world. The only other Indians who made the list were Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Azim Premji, the chief executive officer of software giant Wipro.