 |
|
Maharani Prem Kumari aka Anita Delgado |
While there may be no direct desi connection to the Desi(red) campaign featuring Penelope Cruz that Ennis wrote about below, Cruz certainly has at least one strong connection to the Des. It turns out Cruz in her directorial debut, will put on celluloid the story of Anita Delgado, the flamenco dancer from Andalucia who created a stir when she agreed to marry an Indian king -Maharaja Jagatjit Singh Bahadur- in 1908. The film, based on the the book Pasion India by Javier Moro is tentatively titled The Princess of Kapurthala, and much of the shooting will reportedly occur in the congested and oh-so-regal streets of Old Delhi and in the palaces of Kapurthala in Punjab. Cruz will play the part of Delgado, while the rest of the Indian cast is scheduled to be finalized when she heads to India in January to scout for locations.
Sounds promising, right? Well according to the IBNnews website, the film project seems to have rubbed the Kapurthala royal family the wrong way, even before casting has begun. The website reports that…
“The heir of the [Kapurthala Royal] family, Tikka Shatrujit Singh, is ready to go to court over the issue to seek an injunction on the movie, which is based on his grandfather Maharaja Jagatjit Singh.”
The wiki suggests the family opposes the film because they feel Javier Moro’s novel, on which the film is based, distorts the truth, especially the allegations of the Maharajah forcing Anita to have an abortion. I don’t know what is going to happen, but if you think about it, the screenplay almost writes itself. An AndalucÃan flamenco dancer, after refusing the advances of an Indian Maharaja, finally gives in to his charms and shifts from Spain to live in India in 1908, during the heyday of British rule. I really hope the film gets made. Just think of the potential of some wicked latin influenced bollywood dance sequences, a la Shakira’s Bollywood-influenced rendition of Hips Don’t Lie from the 2006 VMAs.
Related: India in Andalucia
