Photo by Brigitte Bouillot
Stella Elizabeth Matthews (Seema Biswas) has been a cook in the Canadian High
Commission in New Delhi for 30 years. She is brilliant as a cook, and brilliant at
creatively padding her salary – with a few pilfered items, some minor overcharging, and
a special phone-order duty free business. A newly posted Canadian diplomat (Lisa Ray)
and her husband Michael (Don McKellar) arrive with their baby (Alexiane Perreault).
After an initial jolt when Stella learns that Michael will be staying home as “diplomatic
housewife” while Maya goes off to work, everything goes swimmingly for Stella. Michael
was a chef in Ottawa and he is longing to learn authentic Indian cooking. Stella agrees
to be his “cooking guru”. But Stella’s cozy domestic set-up implodes when Tannu (Shriya
Saran), an honest nanny, joins the household, and threatens to expose Stella’s
deceptions. Eventually Stella wins Tannu’s full cooperation (and then some!). This
unlikely partnership embarks on a much grander, riskier scam, which seems to bring
disaster. An unexpected kind of justice is found, but not until the guru-student
relationship between Stella and Michael has been sorely tested. Michael has learned
many important lessons from his teacher …including glorious traditional South Indian
cooking. And Stella? Well…. let’s just say dreams sometimes come true in unexpected
ways.
103 minutes - Comedy
Release date: March 26, 2010
Canadian Distributor: Mongrel Media
Dilip Mehta talks to Northernstars.ca about the making of Cooking with Stella.
Don McKellar talks to Northernstars.ca about his role in Cooking with Stella.
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