Freida Pinto with co-star Josh Brolin in You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

Cannes, May 15: Freida Pinto’s Latika, the Mumbai maiden in salwar kameez and yellow dupatta in Slumdog Millionaire, has been transformed into Dia, a sophisticated Indian girl in a red dress in Woody Allen’s new movie, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, which got its world premiere in Cannes today.

A “lovely apparition” is how the unidentified narrator describes Dia when she is first glimpsed through an open window across the street by an American writer, Roy Channing, played by the versatile Josh Brolin.

It does not take long for Roy, who is struggling to get his novel published and who is not very happily married to his English wife, Sally (Naomi Watts), to become obsessed with the girl who has the red dress on.

Freida certainly is easy on the eye, carefully made up to look as though she has no need for make-up.

Indian audiences will be able to compare and contrast Freida’s roles in Slumdog Millionaire and You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger as soon as the movie is released worldwide.

Opinions in Cannes today were divided. “We bought it unseen a year ago,” disclosed Amit Jumani, a director of the Mumbai-based family distribution company WEG Entertainment Ltd. “Woody Allen is Woody Allen.”

In theory, Freida is now on a par with Penélope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson, the female leads in Allen’s 2008 movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which was also released in India by WEG.

“We released about 20 prints of that in India,” said Jumani. “Because of Freida, we will be releasing 75-100 prints of You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger in metros across India.”

In today’s film, Freida is spotted through the window playing a guitar. An aroused Roy then spies her stripping down to her (red) bra and (red) panties as she embraces a man who has entered the room. There is no guarantee Indian censors will leave the scene – essential to the story line – uncut.

This is the “most erotic” moment Roy has experienced for a long time, he would later tell Dia on their first lunch date. She tells him she is engaged to an English diplomat who pops over intermittently from Brussels.

However, that does not stop Dia from allowing Roy to flirt with her. Should she feel guilty about enjoying the increasingly serious flirtation, she asks Roy who says she shouldn’t.

Dia’s father (Anupam Kher) reads Roy’s manuscript and considers the novel to be wonderful. The only trouble is that the book has been written not by Roy but by one of his friends, a much better writer who he thinks has been killed in a car accident. (There is another little twist later on when Roy learns that the real author was only badly injured in the crash but had survived.)

By and by, Dia dumps the fiancé – a sequence that Freida’s one-time fiancé Rohan Antao might feel a little true to life. Dia allows Roy, who has broken up with his wife, Sally, to move in with her.

Meanwhile, there are other affairs going on. For example, Sally’s mother, Helena (Gemma Jones), who has been abandoned by her husband, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins), has possibly the most unusual role in the film – she spends a fortune on a fortune teller, Cristal (Pauline Collins), who offers solace by predicting she will meet a tall, dark stranger.

At the post-screening media conference, Allen, flanked by his cast though not Freida, who is absent apparently because she is filming in Tarsem Singh’s Immortals in Canada, offered an idiosyncratic view of life. Perhaps the luckiest people were those who, like Helena, could delude themselves into being happy rather than those who saw life as it really was.

“My own perspective on life is that I have a grim perspective of life,” began Allen. “If you try to be too honest, it becomes unbearable.”

The title of his movie was “ambiguous”, he explained. In America, the expression, “you will meet a tall dark stranger” signified a possible future romance. But it also means the grim reaper that we all have to meet.”

Allen’s effortless wisecracking was in full flow when asked by a young woman journalist how he felt about getting old. “There is no advantage in getting old,” he told her. “I am 74 and I don’t recommend it. I would advise you not to do it. You don’t have to for, at least, a couple of years.”

In short, “my relationship with death is I’m strongly against it,” was a typical Allen quip.

Being a director – “and I have made 40-41 films” – meant being pointed out as “that old man over there”.

He said he would much rather be “the young man in the restaurant who looks into a girl’s eyes and tells her lies”.