Medialuna

TANDOORI LOVE

By Oliver Paulus

FESTIVALS & AWARDS

Hofer Filmtage, Cairo Film Festival, Film Festival of India, Santa Barbara Film Festival, Filmfest Max Ophüls Preis, Cinequest, Pantalla Pinamar, Shanghai IFF
Best Film Audience Award, Swiss Awards 2009

SYNOPSIS

Sonja is an attractive blonde who works as a waitress at the ”Hirschen” a traditional country tavern in a small village in the Swiss Mountains. She is engaged to Markus, her boss. Sonja has never really questioned whether Markus is the love of her life – not until Rajah, a masterful Indian chef, begins courting her.
Rajah is the personal chef of Priya Dhavan, a gorgeous Bollywood superstar, who is shooting a new film near Interlaken. Unable to resist Sonja, Rajah abandons everything to win her favour. He ditches the film crew to work at the ”Hirschen”. While Rajah’s culinary talents take everybody by storm, Markus remains oblivious to his new chef’s ardent passion for his fiancée.
Chaos erupts before long: Claiming Rajah hers, Priya resorts to desperate measures, throwing the filmset into upheaval. Sonja becomes trapped between two men representing two worlds – between Markus, who offers her security and status, and Rajah, whose charm and culinary magic she can neither elude nor resist …

DIRECTOR´S STATEMENT

The Indian connection in TANDOORI LOVE is based on the fact that Indian film crews are coming to Switzerland for their shooting purposes already for more than four centuries. 18 years ago, during my first trip to India, I came suddenly across “Switzerland” while watching a Bollywood movie somewhere in the middle of the Indian countryside. The effect of this amusing “discovery” was definitely the subliminal inspiration for TANDOORI LOVE, even though I wasn’t yet a film director at that time. I started writing a story about a Bollywood crew shooting in Switzerland several years ago. But it was completely impossible to get such a project financed before the first waves of the general Bollywood hype started to shake Europe, about five or six years ago. In 2004 Cobra Film financed the development of the screenplay and in January 2005 I came back to India for deeper research purposes. To do justice to the figure of the cook, and to gain a better understanding of different regional cooking philosophies, I have spent several weeks looking over many shoulders in different kitchens in India.
I’m a big fan of Bollywood. The movies are deeply emotional and full of joy, music, colours, kitsch and luscious pathos - elements that are rare or even completely missing in most of our European movies. In TANDOORI LOVE we’re trying to combine some of these Bollywoodian elements with the European way of story telling, respectively complex and multi-layered characters. It’s a settled comedy with some grotesque slapstick and subtly caricatured figures. But nevertheless TANDOORI LOVE is about profoundly human characters and the agonisingly existential and emotional decisions challenging them.

DIRECTOR´S BIOGRAPHY

Oliver Paulus was born in 1969 in Dornach (Switzerland). He first attended the School of Fine Arts in Basel before he studied directing and screenwriting at the famous Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in Germany. In 1995 Oliver was honoured with the MAX OPHULS AWARD and in 1997 with the STUDY AWARD of the Solothurn Government. In 2005 he got invited to direct the prestigious PARISIENNE PEOPLE commercial in the succession of such outstanding directors as Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altmann, the Coen Brothers, David Lynch, Emir Kusturica and Roman Polanski.

CAST

Sonja: Lavinia Wilson
Markus: Martin Schick
Rajah: Vijay Raaz
Pryja: Shweta Agarwal
Rosmarie Kübli: Verena Zimmermann
Anita: Johanna Bantzer
Stammtisch-Stöff: Peter Glauser
Gusti: Max Ruedlinger
Karli: Rene Blum
Heinzelmann: Christoph Gaugler

CREW

Director: Oliver Paulus
Script: Oliver Paulus, Stefan Hillebrand
Cinematography: Daniela Knapp
Music: Marcel Vaid
Original Songs: Jesse Milliner, Erdal Tosun
Choreography: Gisela Rocha
Producer: Valerie Fischer
Production Company: Cobra Film AG, Zürich (CH)
Coproduction Company: Pandora Film

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Original title: Tandoori Love / 92min / 35mm / 1:2,35 / Color / Dolby SR / Original Language: Swiss German, Hindi, with English Subtitles / Switzerland, Germany 2008