Rahul Bose - a metaphor for his country

Rahul Bose can't stop laughing. At the recently-concluded Tribeca Film Festival in New York critic, Sandy Mandelbergers commenting on Santosh Sivan's Before The Rains wrote, "The impossibly handsome Indian actor Rahul Bose gives a startling performance as a man torn between modernism and tradition, a metaphor for his entire country." Rahul is tickled pink, "Either this lady can't see or hasn't met many men. But seriously, I'm deeply flattered. I'm getting that face- lift and hair-weave done asap."

It's a sort of world record that Rahul Bose had three releases in three different languages in the last one month. "Samar Khan's Shaurya came first. It was in Hindi and I was very pleased with its outcome," said Rahul . "Now Before the Rains releases in America on May 9. It's going to play in New York and ten other cities. Not in the NRI theatres but it's definitely an art house release. So me and the director Santosh Sivan hope to make an impact beyond the song-and-dance formula with this one," says Rahul from the Los Angeles.

Before The Rains goes to the UK in summer. The film has just won three major awards at the Houston Film Festival. "It's a triumph for Santosh on so many levels. A film in English from India winning the awards for Best Film, Best Cinematography and Best Music …it's incredible!" exults Rahul Bose who plays the Indian male lead in Santosh Sivan's cross-cultural colonial love story Before The Rains.

Rahul is at the moment in LA for the screening of Before The Rains before he moves to Houston for a gala screening. "There'll be an auctioning of the film for me by the NGO Pratham. My sympathies with the people who'll have lunch with me," jokes Rahul.

About the film Rahul says, "It's a film- noire about an illicit love relationship and how I get caught in it. It's definitely an arthouse product with an element of the whodunit." Before The Rains is Rahul's second release in a month…and in English! "And then I had a Bengali release in India this week. Buddhadeb Dasgputa's Kalpurush is a film very close to my heart. And we waited two years for it to release," sighed Rahul.