`KAMA SUTRA' NOT DONE BY THE BOOK : FILMMAKER NAIR AIMS FOR A DIFFERENT SEXUALITY THAN USUALLY SEEN IN WESTERN, EASTERN CINEMA.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

Mira Nair comes from India, thinks in English, lives in Africa and makes movies everywhere.

But whether they take place in the American South (``Mississippi Masala''), Miami's Cuban community (``The Perez Family'') or the red-light district of a teeming Asian city (``Salaam Bombay!''), all of the director's films address the universal longing for love.

It seems almost inevitable, then, that the Harvard-educated Nair would make a movie inspired by the most famous love manual in the world. ``Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love'' tries to emphasize the philosophical and emotional wisdom that can be found in the fourth-century Hindu text, even as it brings sensuous life to the scripture's better-known instructions on erotic techniques.

Set in an incredibly sumptuous, 16th-century Indian kingdom, Nair's film is rife with jealousy, court intrigue and debauchery - and beautiful young bodies passionately entwined.

Erotic mission

But Nair had more than titillation on her mind. She wanted to approach eroticism in a way that neither the Indian nor American commercial cinemas - the two largest in the world - usually do.

``I was inspired to make this film, in a way, to counter the sexist spectacle of these film industries,'' said Nair, visiting Los Angeles from her home in Cape Town, South Africa, where her husband is a university professor. ``The kind of emotionless way that sexuality is presented on Western screens; and in India, where sexuality is considered somewhat taboo, the way it is perverted and cloaked in rape and violence in the movies.

``So I wanted to go back to a time when love was something to be taken very seriously and was believed to have a philosophical and sacred dimension to it.''

To play out her historical melodrama, Nair chose four young actors of subcontinental heritage who had been raised in the West - Indira Varma, Ramon Tikaram and ``The English Patient's'' Naveen Andrews from Britain, and ``Mississippi Masala'' star Sarita Choudhury from the United States. But even though director and ensemble shared similar sensibilities, filming such an intimate story was still a touchy process.

``They were all raised with a certain prudence,'' Nair confirms. ``Of course, I made it all very clear in the beginning, so there were no surprises later. But filming erotic scenes, love scenes, is a real delicate balance of choreography and chemistry. The way I do it is to just marinate the actors in love, in my love for them and a kind of trustful atmosphere. That way, we all have the capability to take on the risks.''

Sensual appeal

Nair also wanted ``Kama Sutra'' to appeal to all the senses - and to her own multicultured sensibility.

``Our older civilization was an extraordinarily opulent and beautiful culture,'' she says of medieval India. ``So, of course, this was a great film for me to exercise all of my aesthetic indulgences, working with an extremely refined tradition of textiles, jewelry, codes of color. Like we have the Kama Sutra on love, we have a book on color and art, and we based a lot of the color palate on that.

``And it was totally an experiment for me to shoot it in English,'' Nair says of the movie, which was filmed entirely in western India. ``Because it's an independent film, I had no one telling me how to do it. So I thought I would try to make a profoundly Indian film in the language that I think in.''

Nair supervised a careful dub of ``Kama Sutra'' into Hindi, however, then fought a long battle with India's strict film censorship board to get the picture released in her native land. The nation's Supreme Court recently decided in Nair's favor, and, with about two minutes worth of cuts, ``Kama Sutra'' is scheduled to hit Indian screens on March 21.

``I think it's going to be quite controversial,'' Nair reckons. ``And it could really affect what is to come after it, because this is really the first film in India to take on sexuality in as direct and nonartificial a way as I have done.''

Love springs eternal

Regardless of how well ``Kama Sutra'' goes over in India and the rest of the world, expect Nair to continue exploring love as an integral component of life.

``I don't think my next film is going to be about sex in as direct a way as in `Kama Sutra,' '' she laughs. ``But I think it's as the Kama Sutra says: the art of living is more important than the act itself.

``It's about how I see the world,'' Nair says of her movies. ``I do occupy all my senses when I see the world. It's not something that is outside my being, it's very integrated with me. Maybe that's why I view all of the worlds that I create in front of the camera with that sensuality.''

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Photo

Photo: In a scene from director Mira Nair's ``Kama Sutra,'' servant girl Maya (Indira Varma) seduces the king, Raj Singh (Naveen Andrews), on the eve of his marriage.