Sharmila Tagore

This decade may well be called the "Decade of Indian Women Celebrities at Cannes." India's Sharmila Tagore, who will be the ninth member of this year's top Competition jury, follows Arundhati Roy, Aishwarya Rai and Nandita Das.

The Festival that is set to roll on May 13, 2009 by the surf and sand at the French Riviera did always have an eye for beautiful people. Some of the most glamorous actresses were wooed by the Festival, and as part of this roses-and-wine game, they were invited to serve on the Competition jury of what is still considered the world's top movie event. Women such as Isabella Adjani, Sharon Stone, Chiara Mastroianni, Mira Sorvino, Michelle Yeoh, Winona Ryder, Salma Hayek and Holly Hunter have, at one time or the other, been part of the main jury. It did not take much effort to understand that Cannes had to have its glamour quotient on the jury as well, the quotient that liberally provided the photo opportunities. Of course, the juries had the other side: distinguished directors, writers and so on.

Tagore, who was once known as the Bengal Tigress, because of the fire and fury she exuded, will undoubtedly add to the jury's allure, as did Aishwarya Rai in 2003. Unlike Das, Tagore was never believed to be a thinking actress, and even on screen, she was not considered anywhere close to being brilliant – the way Waheeda Rehman or Nutan, for instance, was.

Admittedly, Satyajit Ray found her and cast her in "Apur Sansar" (The World of Apu), where as a child bride, Tagore was noticed for her freshness and natural ease. A year later, Ray cast her again in "Devi" (The Goddess). She acted in a few more of his works.

When she migrated to Bollywood's greener pastures a little later, stardom came to her and with it a general sense of complacency that allowed little room for real hard performances. Except for "Anupama" in 1966 and "Aradhana" in 1969, Tagore, throughout the 1960s, worked in eminently forgettable films, such as "Kashmir Ki Kali," "Waqt," "An Evening in Paris" and so on. Her roles here had little meat in them. Her cavorting in a bikini for "An Evening in Paris" produced enough masala for Mumbai's media of the 1960s, and it was considered extremely daring. Was it after this that she was nicknamed "Bengal Tigress"? I am not sure.

Of course, Tagore did manage to slip into a few noteworthy performances later, "Amar Prem" and "Mausam," for example. But she never reached the status of, say, Smita Patil or Shabana Azmi or even Rekha or Bengal's Suchitra Sen, let alone Waheeda Rehman or Nutan.

In some ways, Tagore's family had a role to play in her success. She was poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore's granddaughter. And the family had very close ties with Ray, who was an ardent admirer of the poet and his abode, Shantiniketan. And now, her gorgeous good looks may have well played a part at Cannes, whose obsession with shimmer and shine is hardly hidden.

Sharmila Tagore's selection on the jury – as that of Roy, Rai and Das – seems like Cannes' desperate effort to have a token Indian presence, given the fact that the country churns out the largest number of movies every year. (Last year, it was 1300-odd, compared with Hollywood's 600 or so.). It is no-show for Indian films at Cannes this year as well: Sanjay Leela Bhansali's "Devdas" was the last Indian work at Cannes. That was in 2002. The Festival's General-Delegate, Thierry Fremaux, once told me that if they could not have an Indian movie in the official sections, they might as well have Indian jurors. So, it is Tagore this time.