Review of Cooking With Stella (2010) by Felis D — 24 Apr 2011

The premise had a lot of promise when I first read about it in the Globe and Mail, but the execution of it was awkward, rambling and disjointed. Ostensibly, this is a story about a Canadian once-chef who finds a guru in the cook at the Canadian High Commission, but the Canadian characters and their various issues feel tacked on with tape right from the beginning. The real story is about Stella, her little scams, and her dreams of making a better life for herself by taking advantage of the "haves" whom she works for.

Ultimately, the story is poorly told. There are little visual and musical stings at the beginning which seem to indicate that "this is a quirky movie", but the twists that they reveal (Surprise! The woman is the ambassor, not the man! Surprise! The man is a really good cook and a professional chef! Surprise! He wants to shop in the Indian markets instead of the Embassy grocery store!) are outdated and plodding. After that it went from one stretched-to-the-point-of-fatigue, suspension-of-disbelief trope to another. I was hoping for more when I rented this film, but was sorely disappointed.