Her avatars have ranged from the boilersuit-clad tomboy Charlene to a scantily clad vamp riding a bucking bronco in a steamy lingerie advert. Today Kylie Minogue adopts yet another incarnation — as a Bollywood starlet.

The 41-year-old Australian is making her Hindi cinema debut in Blue, a scuba-diving caper that is being billed as India’s first underwater action movie. The film, which is released today to coincide with the start of Diwali, the Hindu festival of light and a key weekend for the Indian box office, is believed to be the most expensive Bollywood production yet made — although its estimated budget of £14 million would be considered puny by Hollywood standards.

The producers have made much of the participation of Minogue, apparently hoping to distance their film from Bollywood’s traditional kitsch romances and bombastic potboilers, the popularity of which is waning. Blue tells the story of a group of underwater treasure hunters “who have to grapple with sharks — and their own consciences”.

However, Minogue plays only a cameo part. Her main contribution comes in Chiggy Wiggy, a song produced in collaboration with A. R. Rahman, the Indian composer known as the “Mozart of Madras”, who won an Oscar this year for creating the track Jai Ho! for the soundtrack to Slumdog Millionaire.

In the leading roles are Akshay Kumar, one of India’s most bankable action heroes, and Lara Dutta, an Indian actress and former Miss Universe, whose rumoured bikini scenes in Blue have already made headlines in the press. Katrina Kaif, the Bollywood superstar who grew up in the London borough of Barnet, also makes a short appearance, as does Sanjay Dutt, a veteran actor widely regarded as a loveable rogue — even if he once spent time in jail for allegedly being in possession of several assault rifles supplied by a Mumbai underworld don.

Much rests on the film’s success: Bollywood has suffered a torrid year, enduring a string of big-budget flops that forced its leading men and women to take steep pay cuts. Early reviews suggest that Minogue may indeed breathe new life into the industry: yesterday’s Indian Express described Chiggy Wiggy — a blend of lightweight Western R&B and thumping bhangra — as a “meaningless cacophony”, but managed to do so approvingly. The newspaper went on to describe how Minogue’s “chartbuster” had already become a “household word in India”.

The respected film critic Taran Adarsh called Blue “the most awaited movie of the year”. His review concluded: “You haven’t watched something like this on the Hindi screen before. Never ever.”

The Indian public have already shown a willingness to accept foreign imports, even if the Hindi-dubbed version of Slumdog Millionaire fizzled out at the box office. Last year Snoop Dogg become the first hip-hop artist to contribute to a Hindi film — the hit comedy Singh Is Kinng. “I’m coming to take over Bollywood,” he said at the time. “This is just the beginning.”

Several Hollywood icons have also made the trip east — not least among them Steven Spielberg. He sealed a business deal recently that means his next film — likely to be a remake of Harvey, the classic 1950 tale of a man who befriends a giant invisible rabbit — will be funded by the Bollywood mogul Anil Ambani.

Sing-along-a-Kylie

I wanna chiggy-wiggy with you boy

I wanna chiggy-wiggy with you boy

I wanna chiggy-wiggy with you fella

Just chiggy-wiggy with you baby

Free-eeeee your mind

Free is the way to live it up

Free-eeeee to go

Free if I don’t wanna give it up

Free-eeeee to groove

The dance floor’s where I wanna be

Free-eeeee to move

White picket fences frighten me

I wanna chiggy-wiggy with you boy

I wanna chiggy-wiggy with you boy

I wanna chiggy-wiggy with you fella

Just chiggy-wiggy with you baby

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