Tandoori Love (also Amor Tandoori)

Cinequest 2009

Tandoori Love is bright, colorful, musical, romantic, slightly violent and best of all, contains extreme close-ups of the most beautiful, delicious Indian food. This is fusion filmmaking at its best and most hilarious, and you will leave the theater desperately searching for the nearest Indian restaurant.

Sonja lives in the Swiss Alps and is engaged to Markus. Well, he hasn’t actually proposed yet, or given her a ring, but he has already announced the engagement to their families. Markus seems like a nice guy if a bit of a mama’s boy, and Sonja is a gorgeous Swiss Miss with very long legs and red hair.

All is going well until a Bollywood film crew sets up camp next to their chalet/restaurant. Spoiled Priya is a Bollywood diva who loves Raja, the crew cook. But Raja only has eyes for the Swiss beauty in the chalet. Markus, unaware of Raja’s love for his fiancé, hires him to be the new cook for the restaurant.

And now the fun begins. The arrival of the film crew has turned all of Switzerland into a Bollywood movie. Raja makes an impromptu marriage proposal to Sonja in the supermarket and suddenly is singing a love ballad while all the Swiss customers start dancing in sync. After every declaration of love or rejection we cut to an overproduced Bollywood music video. And of course we have the standard boy meets girl, loses girl, accidentally stabs a man in the back, and then wins girl in the end. But you never know which boy and which girl will end up with whom.

This movie is just pure, enjoyable fun. There are no deep messages here, no thoughtful quandaries to think about later, it’s just a fun and quite beautiful Swiss-Bollywood movie. Definitely one of my favorites this year.

One of my favorites ever, and I’ve never been able to see it since. Available only in NON-USA format DVD.