Toronto to get a taste of Stella's cooking

"I find it difficult to make a film without Seema Biswas," says Deepa Mehta, who has directed Biswas in Water.

And acclaimed photographer-turned-movie director Dilip Mehta could echo his sister's sentiments. In Cooking With Stella, his first feature film, Dilip Mehta has given Biswas one of the meatiest roles of her career.

Biswas, 44, who began her career with Shekar Kapur's Bandit Queen in 1994 and who has acted in over 30 films including Yeh Mera India and Vivah, plays the title role in Cooking with Stella.

Biswas gives a spontaneous and natural performance throughout the English-language film. The movie, which was one of the three Indian films What's Your Raashee? and Dil Bole Hadippa! being the others -- to have a red carpet gala at the Toronto International Film Festival, has received three stars (out of four) from The Globe and Mail. The film is expected to open only early next year.

Biswas plays the house cook at the Canadian high commission in New Delhi, teaching a few cooking tricks to Michael (Don McKellar), the husband of the diplomat (Lisa Ray).

Now funny, now conspiring and now ordering people around her, Biswas is also treat to the eyes when she instructs her new 'master' how to make the dishes from her home state, Kerala.

Stella has a number of other tricks at her disposal, and she will use them with delight.The Globe and Mail called the film -- which is co-written by Deepa and Dilip Mehta -- 'sensual.'

The Canadian newspaper singled out Biswas, calling her 'superb.' Several other Toronto publications, even those that thought the film was nothing great, praised its visuals and Biswas. 

Biswas says she goes 'out of my way to look for roles that are not usual.

'Though she has played a number of interesting roles including that of a friendly widow in a house for widows run by a domineering woman (in the Oscar-nominated Water), Biswas says she is 'always afraid of being typecast.'

Director Dilip Mehta says much of the film 'is based on my experiences living in Delhi, and my fascination with how different cultures interact. Interact in all sorts of ways, but especially around the question of omnipresent domestic help and how this "culture shock" is often unsettling for new arrivals in India.'

Unlike Michael, Stella's previous diplomat employers were not much interested in

Indian recipes. She is used to serving her diplomats more Westernised dishes, which she calls 'master's food', and has always made 'servant's food' for herself: Wonderful Dals, curries, Chutneys, Dosas. These are the dishes that Michael wants to master.

Dilip Mehta says food serves 'as a central metaphor in the movie, a cultural unifier and bridge between characters.'

His film, he says, 'is about cross cultural (and class) misunderstandings and it is through the lively exchange of recipes, food lore, trips to the market, arguments, mistakes, and experiments, that Stella and Michael are able to realign (somewhat) the servant-employer dynamic, and to forge a true cooking guru-student understanding.'