Bollywood confidential

On a steamy monsoon afternoon, Upen Patel stares out at the palm trees blowing in the breeze from the Arabian Ocean. Inside the sumptuous hotel in Juhu, playground of north Bombay's film people, there is a stir of excitement as a minor TV starlet walks past. A hotel like this or outside on Juhu Beach, where hip-gyrating Hindi film sequences are sometimes shot, is the nearest most Indians will ever get to the massive cinema industry that holds their imaginations captive. Patel, a 23-year-old Londoner, still can't quite believe he is here. For years he, like thousands of British Asians, devoured every Hindi movie he could get his hands on, secretly dreaming of one day making it big in Bombay. He kept his dream to himself, however, because nobody in Britain's Asian community ever made it in the provincial, closed world of Bollywood. But now, with a dynamic Bombay film industry searching for new ideas, new looks and new talent, Patel has moved to India, found an agent and taken acting classes. He believes he is on the threshold of stardom. He is sure that he has the right look for the moment, that his British background has given him an exotic edge. Four months after he moved to Bombay, negotiations for his launch movie are well underway. "I've always loved Indian films and I've always had the same dream that every other Asian kid has: breaking into Bollywood," he says. "Now I'm here and I think I'm on the verge of doing it. There are fantastic opportunities here in India and plenty of room for talent." If his film deal goes through, Patel, a male model, won't quite be the first British Asian to break into Bollywood. That honour goes to Katrina Kaif, 20, also a model, from Finchley in north-west London. She has exploded into the big time with one of the year's biggest and most notorious releases: the fashion world-meets-underworld thriller Boom. The UK's Asians have always been obsessive watchers of Bollywood films: Britain has the biggest audience for Hindi films outside India and represents a big contribution to the industry's £500m annual turnover. However, while Indian movie talents (including director Shekar Kapoor and actor Om Puri) have found success in western cinema, British Asians have been only fans of Bollywood films, not players in them. All that is now changing. The actor who first promised to make British Asians hot property in Bombay was Kaif, thanks to her performance in Boom. She still could, despite the shocked reaction to the film when it was released a couple of weeks ago. The film, also starring Padma Lakshmi (Salman Rushdie's partner), was billed as bravely experimental by India's conservative standards. But it has been panned by critics horrified at the amount of skin and crudity on offer. Admittedly, Kaif's big break may not give her the profile she hoped for - one critic's unkind view was that she was "made to look and feel irreparably retarded". The film itself has been derided. Final Frontier of Debauchery, Boom Bombs and From Boom to Doom were some of the headlines in India's Bollywood-obsessed press. But it has got Kaif the attention a new actor needs. Her dreamy face is splashed all over Bombay's billboards and magazine covers. Her foreignness created a stir, marking her out from the dozens of actors who launch each year - most of whom sink without trace. The film, shot in "Hinglish" (Hindi-English) and touted as a crossover project with appeal to east and west, breaks many Bollywood traditions. There are no dance sequences and it pushes at the frontiers of what is tolerated sexually in conservative India. Gangsters grab their crotches and get blow jobs under the table while models flaunt and tease their way through a film with a plot as flimsy as their bikinis. Kaif, who says she was picked because of her ability to look naive, shows a lot more skin than other demure starlets, and she has a seduction scene that has worked the critics into a lather. It's not surprising that this has caused a fuss: this is a land where, until recently, on-screen kisses were carefully timed by the censor, and actresses are still accompanied to shoots by their mothers. The film may sink her career; it certainly has not done well at the box office, despite the furore. Then again, it might just propel her into the big time. Kaif admits that she felt uneasy with Boom when it was finished, and says now that she regrets doing it. She blames her lack of experience with Indian culture - her mother, a lawyer, is English and her father, a businessman, is Kashmiri, and she grew up outside the Asian community. "I wouldn't have worried if it had been an English film," she says. "Exposing skin is accepted in the English film culture. But no way will this be accepted here, and the image projected by Boom is not me." Despite this hiccup, Kaif is enthusiastic about India's film world: "Everyone is so warm and friendly here. It's so colourful and fun. I'm going to stay in Bombay for good. I really wanted to get away from London, I was bored with it. It's struggle, struggle all the time there." Patel agrees; he is surprised at how easy it was to blaze a trail in Bombay. "I think in London the Asian look is not really in," he says. "Modelling in London was really difficult, and acting, forget it. But here, being an NRI [non-resident Indian] makes you a bit exotic. The entertainment industry is massive and there are no barriers. New TV serials are starting every week, there are lots of film-makers, lots of modelling work. For any other British Asians, I would say, if you've got the talent, there are opportunities here if you work hard." Kaif, however, does not believe being an NRI is any advantage. "If anything, the overseas Indian market wants women who are Indianised," she says. "And they tell me here I have a classical Indian face." She says coming to Bombay has involved a discovery of her Indian identity. She has struggled to learn Hindi - not knowing the language has already cost her a couple of film roles - but says she feels more at home in Bombay than she ever did in England. "I feel more Indian here. In London people say, 'You can't be Indian,' but here they accept me." Veteran director Mahesh Bhatt believes we'll be seeing a lot more British Asians in Bollywood. "It's the sort of thing we must expect with the globalisation of Indian film culture," he says. "And Hindi films are almost like a religion for British Asians. Bollywood connects Indians all over the world, and if they come from Birmingham or London to get into our film industry, well, why not?"