DIFF Review: ‘Cooking with Stella’

Dilip Mehta’s “Cooking with Stella” tackles the familiar territory of the culture clash comedy through its use of food as a backdrop.  It’s the tale of Michael and Maya (Don McKellar and Lisa Ray) who relocate to New Delhi, India from their home in Ottawa, Canada.  Maya is an Indo-Canadian diplomat who has been relocated to the High Commission of Canada in New Delhi while Michael is a househusband and former chef who is looking after their young daughter.  They choose to stay in official lodgings for diplomats and are assigned a house servant, Stella (Seema Biswas).  Michael uses his unemployment as an attempt to expand his palette and he quickly designates Stella as his guru. Stella has been working with diplomatic families for years and knows every little trick that can be used to con money out of naïve foreigners.  Unfortunately, things get complicated for Stella when Michael and Maya hire a new nanny, Tannu (Shriya Saran) who threatens to expose Stella’s thieving ways.

Mehta seems confused about exactly what his film is.  Sometimes it’s a comedy, sometimes it’s a drama and sometimes it’s social satire.  On occasion, it’s all three.  The viewer can easily feel baffled by the rapidly shifting tones and moods of the film.  It really succeeds in the moments when it plays as a light comedy.  The character of Stella provides the most comic relief through the way she easily takes advantage of Michael and Maya but even these jokes get old fast since Michael and Maya are the type of innocent Canadians that hand out money before it can even be swindled out of them.  They’re too boring as a couple and any attempt to create tension between them falls flat.   Towards the last third of the film the plot shifts to focus largely on Tannu but this segment is easily the weakest.  Her character is used to bring attention to the plight of the lower class in India but she is never developed fully enough to bring in any sympathy for the character.

The contrast between the living situation of our Canadian protagonists and the impoverished Indians is touched upon but never fully explored.  Scenes of Michael and Maya’s grand residence and ones of a local street market where Stella buys her grocery are paired against each other nicely.  However, there is no footage portraying the real poverty India faces thus weakening the film’s attempts at insightful social commentary.  If Mehta really wanted to make a point about the clash between different cultures and classes it would have helped him to make his characters less stereotypical.  His Canadians are of course innocent and naïve and his poor Indians are all crafty swindlers.

Overall, the character of Stella is the real diamond in the rough here.  Biswas plays her perfectly.  One can’t ever stay mad at her for long enough regardless of how much thieving she does around the house because she later turns around and does something supremely sweet for Michael.    She provides nearly all of the film’s humor and comes off as the most endearing character.   Mehta’s film could have succeeded if he had left it at the light comedy territory but he oversteps his material too often and his attempts at social satire fall flat.  If anything, “Cooking with Stella” will just leave you with a craving for some butter chicken masala.