Riviera nights.

(From The Statesman (India))

Who wants to market Bollywood? The Cannes film festival has never been a happy hunting ground for India and if Devdas was a major draw last year, it was primarily to allow a bit of Indian glamour to grace the Riviera. It also paved the way for Aishwarya Rai becoming a member of the international jury this year without any trace of an Indian film in the competition. This is obviously because the Devdas culture provides casual amusement to the festival crowd outside the competition without suggesting that the song and dance formula can give any of the potential winners a run for its money or even find perpetual audiences outside the Indian diaspora. Given these basic truths, it is surprising that the Information and Broadcasting ministry ought to have spent so much of the taxpayer's money in providing a colourful face of popular Indian cinema in the Mediterranean town complete with a floor show by a starlet on an India ...