Though Clueless remains my favorite updated screen adaptation of an Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice is my favorite novel, and its screen adaptations are on the increase. The BBC mini-series starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, set in Austen’s time, begat the novel Bridget Jones’s Diary, which begat a sequel and two movies. Just a couple of years ago a screen version of Pride and Prejudice featured contemporary, young Mormon characters. Coming next year is a new movie version starring Keira Knightly.

And in theaters now is a delightful telling of the tale from director Gurinder Chadha, Bride and Prejudice. Chadha, the director of Bend It Like Beckham and What’s Cooking?, moves a little closer to mixing the traditions of Bollywood and Hollywood in Bride and Prejudice than she has in her previous films, though she’s always mixing cultures.

Chadha brings a love of color and music, a sense of humor, and a generous sympathy towards her characters in every film she makes. She also exhibits a genuine understanding and delight showing us what happens when cultures clash. She is currently filming an adaptation of the novel The Mistress of Spices. Chitra Divakaruni, the author ofThe Mistress of Spices, read from her novel several years ago in Fort Wayne as part of the IPFW Visiting Writer’s Series. We made her promise to return when her novel became a film. I hope we can hold her to that promise, which will come due sometime next year. But I digress.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.”

These are the first two sentences of Pride and Prejudice, and perhaps we have moved far away from these attitudes in the West. But with a long tradition of arranged marriages and social castes, Chadha has easily moved the story to present-day India. She adds the clash of cultures to the clash of classes, and the movie jumps from East to West in terms of location and moviemaking styles.

The most essential elements are easily recognizable. A mother, Nadira Babbar, seeks wealthy husbands for her daughters, and she isn’t shy about it. The extremely beautiful Aishwarya Rai, a huge star in India, plays Lalita. She is the Elizabeth in this story and is joined by three sisters,Namrata and Meghnaa Shirodkar and Peeya Rai Choudhuri. They enjoy the virtues and flaws of the Bennett sisters, though the Bennett sisters have never broken into song during a pajama party singing “No Life Without Wife,” one of many enjoyable musical interludes in Bride and Prejudice.

The musical numbers may be a stretch for both Eastern and Western audiences. They aren’t as lavish as Bollywood numbers, and some are performed in English, but for Western audiences they are like nothing we’ve seen since the heyday of Hollywood musicals. And there is also a rousing tune performed by a dancing gospel choir on the beach in L.A., just to spice things up even more. This isn’t Jane Austen for purists, but it is joyous and often silly. The musical numbers are great fun, once you get used to the idea of them, and Bride and Prejucdice is also a beautiful tour of India.

Lalita meets Will Darcy (Martin Henderson) at a wedding party. He’s a very wealthy, ambitious hotelier, eager to extend his investments to include a lavish resort in India. Of course, they don’t like each other. She finds him arrogant, pretentious and cold. She believes his plans for a resort are based on wanting to give Western tourists a sanitized and phony picture of the country she loves dearly, for its faults as well as its beauties.

No telling of Pride and Prejudice could work without a Wickham, and in Bride and Prejudice he appears as Johnny Wickham (Daniel Gillies), who at first blush appears to be a friend of Darcy’s and a lot more culturally sensitive than Darcy. He’s charming and much more ingratiating to Lalita and her family.

There is also a gruesomely self-satisfied, well-to-do cousin who has made a success of himself in Los Angeles, and he ends up with Lalita’s good friend instead of her or any of her sisters. It is the wedding of this couple that allows Lalita and Darcy to meet again in Los Angeles. Instead of an aunt who doesn’t approve of Lalita, Marsha Mason gives an excellent performance as Will’s unpleasant and domineering mother who doesn’t approve of Lalita. She has a nice white girl all picked out for Will, but he is quite taken (and who wouldn’t be?) by the beautiful, spirited, intelligent Lalita.

Though it is easy to see what Will sees in Lalita, it is much harder to see what Lalita sees in Will. He softens, as all Darcys do, but both the character and the performance never get beyond soft. Martin Henderson is bland and too lacking in sex appeal and charisma to be a good Darcy. This isn’t entirely his fault. This is a very female-centered interpretation of the story. The women are so lovely and are given the juicy scenes, more vibrant relationships and fun musical numbers. Poor Darcy, in contrast, has a haircut and wardrobe that are left over from some very unstylish phase of the late 80s or early 90s. He is all beige compared to the dashing dark hair, pale skin and bright eyes of Lalita.

But a less-than-sizzling Darcy barely gets in the way of the pleasures of Bride and Prejudice. Chadha makes movies that live up to what indie cinema can be. Fun, quirky and inventive. She honors cultural and literary traditions and also manages to make the story fresh and present her own vision of how she wants the world to work. She believes we can all just get along, and it is an enjoyable trip to the movies to spend time in the worlds she creates.