Canadian Film Review: Cooking with Stella (2010)

* 1/2
Director: Dilip Mehta
Starring: Don McKellar, Seema Biswas, Lisa Ray

Can a movie really be considered a comedy if it leaves you feelings so bad afterwards? Cooking with Stella was marketted as a comedy and it plays out as a comedy but it gets so mean-spirited towards the end that I kind of found myself wishing I'd never watched it in the first place. It's too bad because the film actually does have some good moments but they end up being marred by the ugliness of the film's ending.

The film takes place at the Canadian High Commission in New Dehli and centers on Stella (Seema Biswas), who has been a cook for a revolving door of posted dipolmats for about 30 years. Her current diplomatic employer is Maya (Lisa Ray), who has come with her husband Michael (Don McKellar) and their infant daughter. Both Maya and Michael disrupt Stella's expectations of her relationship to her employers, Maya because she's half-Indian but doesn't identify that way - "I was born in Toronto. I'm Canadian," she tells Stella. In very measured tones Stella replies, "As you wish." - and Michael because he doesn't seem to recognize the boundaries that separate him from the staff. Like Stella, Michael is a chef by trade and he wants to learn how to make authentic Indian dishes. Stella is reluctant but ultimately agrees to teach him.

With Michael busy learning from Stella, a nanny is hired to care for the baby. Tannu (Shriya Saran) has never been employed by diplomats before, which is why she comes so cheap, and she sends her earnings to her father to pay medical expenses for her sick brother. Stella attempts to take Tannu under her wing and get her involved in the black market business she has going (which involves stealing from her employers) but Tannu refuses and threatens to expose Stella unless she stops, too. Undaunted, Stella arranges for her godson Anthony (Vansh Bhardwaj) to charm Tannu and bilk her of her earnings so that she'll have no choice but to join Stella.

Typically in a film what would then happen is that Tannu would discover the connection between Anthony and Stella, realize that she's been played, and try to set things right. Similarly, Stella would come to have a genuine affection for Michael and would come to feel bad about taking advantage of him. Neither of these things happen, which I suppose should earn the film points for defying expectations but the turn that the plot takes undercuts whatever charms it had going for it up to this point. No longer content with the small money from the black market business, Stella, Tannu and Anthony hatch a plot to fake Stella's kidnapping in order to get a ransom. Michael and Maya agree to pony up $20k for her safe return and the Canadian government agrees to hand over $40k in exchange for information leading to the capture of the kidnappers. In light of that, Stella agrees to let Tannu turn her in so that the three conspirators can split $40k instead of 20. Stella is convicted, goes to jail and then, with Michael's intervention, is released early and goes off to enjoy her ill-gotten gains with Tannu and Anthony.

Are we really supposed to see this as a happy ending? I mean, yes, on the one hand Stella and company are oppressed people striking a figurative blow against the man, but on the other hand they're literally scamming two people who have been nothing but nice to them. Michael, in particular, comes to care deeply for Stella as his mentor, so much so that he's willing to forgive the fake kidnapping to help her get out of jail. Why does he deserve to be robbed, deceived, and made a fool of? It's really disheartening and frankly kind of gross.

Anyway, whatever the faults of the film itself, none lies with the actors. Biswas and McKellar are particularly good and Ray makes the most of a role that gives her little to work with. All three deserve to be in a better movie.

Canadian Film Review: Water (2005)

* * *
Director: Deepa Mehta
Starring: Sarala Kariyawasam, Seema Biswas, Lisa Ray

Whatever your feelings about Deepa Mehta's politics - and she has some pretty fierce critics on both the right side and the left side of the political spectrum - it's hard to argue that her films don't resonate. If they didn't, they wouldn't provoke such intense feelings. With Water, the final chapter in her Elements Trilogy which also includes Fire amd Earth, Mehta explores, as she often does, the position of women within society, looking specifically this time at the position of widowed women in India during the British Raj.

The story's focus is on Chuyia (Sarala Kariyawasam) who, at eight years old, has already been married off (though she hasn't started living as a wife yet) and is now widowed. In keeping with orthodox Hindu tradition, she is sent to live at a widow's ashram where she will spend the rest of her life atoning for the sins of her past which caused her husband's death. This sounds like forced logic and it is, as a character explains later in the film that widows ashrams have less to do with religion than with economics. Without a husband to support her, a widow becomes a burden to the family and so to relieve that burden, she's sent away under the guise of performing a religious necessicity.

The ashram is run by Madhumati (Manorama), who rules with an iron fist and is friends with a transvestite pimp, Gulabi (Raghuvir Yadav) who helps her prositute Kalyani (Lisa Ray), one of the other widows. The story is split between Chuyia's difficult adjustment to life at the ashram and Kalyani's experiences as a prostitute and her budding (and, of course, doomed) relationship with Narayan (John Abraham), a follower of Gandhi. The fallout from that forbidden relationship has harsh consequences for everyone, including Chuyia in the film's devastating finale.

The story of how Water managed to get made is epic in and of itself. In 2000 Mehta, a lightning rod for controversy ever since Fire, met with hostility from right wing elements in India over the subject matter of her new film. Protestors destroyed sets, permits for location shooting were withdrawn and she was eventually forced to move the production to Sri Lanka, where she had to film under a false title and with a new cast in order to complete it. Given how critical her films are of cultural traditions and mores, particularly as they relate to women, it's not difficult to understand why she attracts controversy even if the sheer level of hositlity directed towards her is ridiculously excessive and probably has the opposite effect than her detractors intend, in that it just brings more attention to the work they'd like to see suppressed. At the same time, however, she also has critics on the other side who argue that her narratives simplify the complex politics of post-colonial India and present women as passive victims needing to be saved.

Personally, speaking specifically of Water and bearing in mind that my knowledge of India's history and politics is scanty at best, I think the criticism of her female characters as passive is a bit shortsighted. The story takes place in 1938 under colonial rule and deals with a community adhering strictly to religious rules and traditions - that's pretty much a recipe for female disenfranchisement. Given that context, it's surprising how active some of the female characters actually are. Kalyani may have been forced into prostitution but when she decides to stop because she's fallen in love with Narayan, she does so and walks away from the ashram knowing that she has the power because they need her (for the economic support she brings) more than she needs them. Similarly, Shankuntala (Seema Biswas), one of the other widows, while devoutly religious is also very strong and not one to be triffled with. She is the one who ultimately rescues Chuyia, even if a great deal of damage has already been done at that point. While the women are all victims in one way or another (be it of abuse or of a socio-political system that deprives them of rights), I don't see this as a narrative about victimization. Rather, I see it as a narrative about women taking steps towards empowerment and agency, no matter how small those steps ultimately are.

Stepping away from the larger issues that the film deals with, I think the main reason that it resonates so clearly is because of the time Mehta takes to develop the relationships between the characters. I saw Water for the first time in 2005 and before watching it again recently, a scene that always stood out for me is one between Chuyia and Shankuntala wherin the latter asks how she looks and the former, in the blunt way of a child, states simply "old." The look on Shanktuntala's face at this response, the way that it expresses hurt and also perhaps jealousy because of the way Chuyia admires Kalyani's beauty, has always stuck with me. Scenes like that one make the film more than a political manifesto and allow it to become an actual story with characters you come to care about. It isn't Mehta's strongest work (I'm rather partial to Earth), but its value as a work of art is greater than any controversy it might attract.

Canadian Film Review: A Stone's Throw (2006)

*
Director: Camelia Frieberg
Starring: Kristen Holden-Ried

One thing this movie gets right: when the police show up in search of the protagonist, who is in turn vague about the circumstances of their interest when question by his nephew, the nephew goes to his room, Googles his uncle’s name and finds out exactly what’s going on. I think I may have inadvertently clapped when that happened and, if I did, it would have been the first and last time during this ill-conceived exercise in cinematical regurgitation.

The plot is a veritable Frankenstein’s monster of a story, sewing together bits and pieces of You Can Count On Me, Erin Brockovich, and The Shipping News to little purpose. Jack (Kristen Holden-Ried), the wayward brother, shows up one day at his sister’s door and is less than forthcoming about his reasons for coming to town. His nephew (Aaron Webster), who idolizes him, believes that he’s come to town to do an exposé on the local mill, which may or may not be causing health problems for local residents.

The story branches off into several potential plots and subplots, none of which ever really takes off to become something substantial. Jack and his sister argue about their dysfunctional childhood, Jack takes up with his sister’s best friend (Lisa Ray), and the nephew – inspired by Jack – tries to take matters into his own hands and take down the plant on his own. But none of this really means anything – the film plants the seeds for several plots, but doesn’t really let any of them grow. There just isn’t a coherent idea here about what kind of movie this should be.

It would be helpful, at least, if the protagonist was someone you could root for – that’s kind of an essential element of an “activist movie.” Instead we have Jack, a photojournalist and environmental activist whose argument seems to rest solely on the assertion that he’s right and everyone else is wrong. He rails against the residents of the town, calling them short-sighted and “self interested,” for turning a blind eye to the problems stemming from the mill because it’s the town’s primary source of employment. Two problems: Firstly, Jack, as we later learn, is on the run after having set fire to some trailers at a mining site (his justification once again comes down to “I’m right, everyone else is wrong”). When he shows up at his sister’s door and when he later gets his nephew to lie to the police for him, he makes them his accomplices. If these aren’t acts of self-interest, I don’t know what is. Secondly, and I may be biased because I grew up in a small town where the local mill provided a great deal of employment, but I don’t think it’s wrong to not want to shut down the business that’s essentially keeping the town alive. There’s a long field between shutting it down completely and regulating it for the sake of the environment and the health of the workers and residents.

In the end, Jack sees the error of his ways and does the “noble” thing by turning himself in and it’s all very anti-climatic because the narrative just doesn’t build to it. The story is so scattered, the characters so flat and lifeless as they go through the motions, re-enacting scenes from other movies, that you really feel nothing for them either way.