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One
Dollar Curry
This
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Movie:
One Dollar Curry (2004)
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Director
: Vijay Singh
About
the Story: One Dollar Curry is the new Indo-Franco-British
film written and directed by acclaimed author and director
Vijay Singh. The film is the story of Nishan (Vikram
Chatwal), a street-smart Indian who reaches Paris in
search of political refuge. He produces a kitchen on
wheels called "One Dollar Curry" to survive.
Ironically, Nishan knows nothing about cooking, but
knows plenty about serving up fun and laughter with
the help of his new friends. In the midst of trying
to get by, Nishan is trapped between two gorgeous women,
one his Indian fiancé (Smriti Mishra) and the
other, his French lover (Gabriella Wright). Nishan uses
his imagination and sense of humour to win the battle
of life.
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Other
Review:
Twenty-four years on and Vijay Singh can still vividly recall
his first experience of polite French society. Brandishing
a letter of introduction to Elisa Breton, Singh somehow managed
to get himself invited to a party being held in honor of the
first lady of French surrealism.
Unable
to speak any French and so nervous he could hardly breathe,
Singh, dressed in a tattered duffel coat, arrived at the apartment
where the party was being held and pushed the doorbell. “This
lady, the hostess, opened the door and the first thing she
said to me was Donnez-moi votre manteau,” remembers Singh.
“Of course I didn’t understand what she was saying so when
she opened her arms wide to receive my coat I assumed she
wanted me to give her a hug, which is exactly what I did.”
It
is a scene that could well have been written for Singh’s exuberant
new movie “One Dollar Curry” about a charismatic, young Sikh,
Nishan, who lands in Paris seeking political asylum.
Desperate
to make a living and bereft of any working papers Nishan hits
the street and tries selling curry out of a bucket. The bucket
might be silver but snooty Parisians still turn their nose
up at Nishan’s endeavors. “Here even dogs eat off Limoges
plates,” Nishan’s Jamaican friend Fixer tells him. So with
the help of the appropriately named Fixer and an opportunistic
TV journalist, Nathalie, Nishan ups the ante and reinvents
himself as the “Maharajah of Indian cuisine,” complete with
mobile-rickshaw. “I wanted to project this whole issue of
immigration and integration which mean a lot to me,” says
Singh who both directed and scripted “One Dollar Curry.” “The
story is essentially about this guy, a Sikh, who comes to
Paris because he’s lost everything in his country except his
sense of humor and imagination. It’s with these two tools
that he’s able to build a new life for himself.”
Why
a Sikh? Singh who is a Rajhastani attended a private school
in Delhi and many of his friends were Sikhs. He remembers
them as being “probably the most gregarious, fun loving community
on this earth and probably the most successful: they’re very
industrious, hardworking.” Singh reckons there must be about
5 000 Sikhs in France, many of whom came here during the 1980s
as political asylum seekers. - ParisVoice.com
Movie Review and links:
- IMDB
Review: Plot Outline: The plot, a young guy build
himself a reputation from a lie, becomes weaker as the film
goes on, because you simply cannot believe in the characters.
- BBC
Movie Review : Best described as a crossover film
for both Indian and mainstream audiences in Europe, France-based
writer/director Vijay Singh's One Dollar Curry tells the
tale of an Indian Sikh named Nishan (Vikram Chatwal) who
takes political refuge in Paris.
- Redhotcurry.com
: One Dollar Curry successfully ran in Paris for over 11
weeks and was shown to house-full theatres in India for
several weeks.
- movies2.nytimes.com:
An illegal alien preys on cultural ignorance for fun and
profit in this satirical comedy from writer and director
Vijay Singh.
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