Freida Pinto's Beautiful Journey : Trishna

The 'Slumdog Millionaire' girl comes back again with an Indian theme, this time she is back on the panorama with 'Trishna' which is a story that explains the journey of a poor village girl who falls for a rich boy. The showcases her along with Anurag Kashyap, who has removed his directorial cap and is working in as an actor in the movie. The actress feels that the journey is sweet but tragic. 

Based on Thomas Hardy's classic Tess of the d'Urbervilles, British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom's newest film is set in rural Rajasthan. It has Pinto playing the title role of Trishna, an auto-rickshaw driver's daughter who falls for a rich boy.(trailer here)

"I guess the journey is very beautiful and at the same time very tragic," she says, "because it goes from being really innocent to being in a situation of almost desperation and finally to redemption."

"It's quite an intense journey for one girl to go through," Pinto told IANS over phone from New York, where she arrived for the red carpet premiere of the film at the IFC Centre in Manhattan earlier this week.

Pinto also admitted that doing 'Trishna' was a tough job for her as the character she played is completely opposite of what she is in real life. The actress is often referred to as outspoken and too bold which is completely against the character Trishna. She also says that Michael had to control her emotions and dialogues through the shoots as she reacted naturally than like what Trishna would have done ""So I guess that was really hard for me, especially because we didn't really have a solid script," she said. "So every time, I would try to say something or speak out against something, Michael would just say, 'No, you don't say anything in this situation. Just observe'."

The actress had also prepared herself by staying in the village in Rajasthan's Osian village in a family setting and interviewed a number of girls who worked at hotels and one who worked as ground staff in an airline.

"It was very interesting that all the stories were different from the other, but the bottom line came down to 'whatever dad thinks is probably right and we'll just follow that or whatever our future husband thinks is right is going to be our life from then on,'" she said.

"And that for me was the startling reality that I had to just come to terms with to understand my character better," Pinto said.

Pinto, who came to limelight with her very first film, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, considers both Boyle and Winterbottom as "absolutely amazing filmmakers," with definitely different working styles.

For one thing they are "very completely different films", Pinto said. " Slumdog... is a love story that has a beautiful message of hope at the end of it. And the other one is a tragic love story which can be very sad." Secondly, while she had a detailed script for Slumdog Millionaire, "as far as Trishna went, all the experience I had gathered was going to be put to the test with Michael because we did not have a solid script and I had to really let go if I had any kind of inhibitions."

Pinto was also happy about her co-star  Anurag Kashyap and thought that he could do some serious acting in future. Also she expressed her desire to start with Bollywood and to do some good movies "Well, when people use the term 'Bollywood', I hope they are including Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee and all these wonderful filmmakers as well because definitely I would love to work with them," said Pinto, adding: "Why not?"

Although she lives in Los Angeles these days for convenience's sake, Mumbai will always be number one for Pinto because "it has made me the person I am today - very outspoken".

"Oh, my god, there is no comparison. Mumbai is Mumbai."

Unknown

- Unknown Updated at: Wednesday, July 18, 2012