HURRAY FOR BOLLYWOOD.(Bride & Prejudice)

It's bold, it's ebullient, it's all about optimism.

In the winter of our discontent-when all are on edge, wondering when the next Orange Alert will be announced-Miramax is banking on a buoyant Bollywood picture to lift America's spirits. Bride & Prejudice, the Anglo-Asian director Gurinder Chadha's version of Jane Austen's masterpiece Pride and Prejudice, opens in New York and Los Angeles on Christmas Day like a beautiful Christmas tree, blazing with all the colors that give hope to life and joy to the season. Harvey Weinstein is betting that this one will have as strong an impact as Chicago did two years ago.

It's like getting a festively wrapped Christmas present, isn't it, having something fun to watch on a dark and chilly January evening? Remember how everyone was so eager to see the all-singing-all-dancing Chicago? And how last year all we had to look forward to was the Civil War (in Cold Mountain)?

Bride & Prejudice is the Bollywood version of Austen's timeless tale of a mother who lives only to marry off her daughters into respectability and status. Filmed in the saturated colors associated with the Indian film industry (somewhat akin to the drenchingly rich hyperreal colors of fifties B movies such as Kismet, if you remember that one), it is a perfect fusion of traditional Indian culture and a zany modernism. The mood? Somewhere between Absolutely Fabulous and a Beyonce video.

Chadha, who scored her first hit with Bend it Like Beckham, went to Ralph Holes and Eduardo Castro for the costumes. Castro, a native of Mexico, took my call on the set at his next project at Universal Studios.

"I love color," Castro told me. "Not afraid of it. We worked by the very seat of our pants. We prepped the film in Bombay, London, and L.A. I tried to find traditional elements of Indian dress and create something contemporary. Like in every Bollywood film, we did a 'wet' number: Sprinklers come on, which creates a sexy scene!

"I was very surprised that entire cities in India look like Cinemascope color every moment," Castro continued. "In northern India men usually wear white, and all the color is concentrated in their turbans. When I arrived in Bombay, the city seemed to me like it was in a gorgeous cloud of orange smoke. (It was probably smog!)"