Karma’s sex scenes axed

He may have managed to woo a foreign production house to help push his English-language film, Karma: Crime, Passion, Reincarnation into Western lands, but director MR Shah Jahan fell a tad bit short to tempt desi scissorhands. Rajesh Ahuja tells more.

He may have managed to woo a foreign production house to help push his English-language film, Karma: Crime, Passion, Reincarnation into Western lands, but director MR Shah Jahan fell a tad bit short to tempt desi scissorhands. The “aesthetically done” sex scenes in his second directorial venture (with an all-international cast and crew) will never make it to the screens, courtesy the Censor Board axe.

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The film is ready for release, sans the bold scenes. “The West is hugely interested in the philosophy of karma and reincarnation. I’ve tried to delve deeper into the subject and made a film for foreign audiences. The film was picked up by Tricoast International when it was screened at Cannes last year. Though I got mixed reviews at Osian’s in Delhi last year, I hope its dubbed version appeals to Indian moviegoers,” he says.

The chopped scenes, he emphasises, are essential to the narrative. “There’s a lovemaking scene in the beginning of the film that has a husband and wife in bed. But it isn’t explicit. Another one’s an intercut and only shows two figurines; again not done in bad taste. But I’m okay with them not being shown in India,” he retorts.

The film features American actors Carlucci Weyant and Alma Saraci in the lead. Shah Jahan, who assisted Richard Attenbo-rough during the filming of Gandhi, elaborates, “It’s a murder mystery set in today’s times with flashbacks of incidents that took place in the characters’ lives in the 70s and 80s.”