A FEW months ago it wasn't the big screen version of Dallas but turning another old US television series into a feature film that was occupying Bend It Like Beckham and Bride & Prejudice director Gurinder Chadha.
That project wasn't going smoothly. She'd been all set to shoot Jeannie, a 1960s series about an astronaut who has his very own genie in a bottle, last year. Then script changes had led to a delay and, back in January, the script was still being reworked.
Now the former BBC reporter and award-winning documentary film-maker is being linked with another higher profile small-to-big screen adaptation. She was named as the new director when Robert Luketic left over casting issues.
Coincidentally Larry Hagman starred in both Dallas and I Dream Of Jeannie on TV. As yet, Chadha's participation hasn't been confirmed. And neither has the casting of John Travolta (as JR), Jennifer Lopez (Sue Ellen), Shirley MacLaine (Miss Ellie) and Luke Wilson (Bobby Ewing). Whatever happens, it shows that the US is taking Chadha seriously, something they've been doing since her film What's Cooking was chosen as the opening night movie of the 2000 Sundance Film Festival.
Her other features as director and writer include Bhaji On The Beach, Bend It Like Beckham and Bride & Prejudice. Now she's taking a back seat - as co-writer and producer - on The Mistress Of Spices, which marks the directing debut of her writing partner (and husband) Paul Mayeda Berges.
"I felt in very safe hands," he says of having his wife as his producer as well as writing partner. "It was a project sent to us in 1996, so we've been living with it for nine years. It was a passionate project for us both." The Mistress Of Spices began life as a novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. This sensual fable about a young woman trained in the ancient and magical art of spices was earmarked for both of them to adapt and for Chadha to direct.
Having made and promoted Bend It Like Beckham and Bride & Prejudice back-to-back with hardly a break, an exhausted Chadha was happy to give up the director's chair to her husband.
"Paul had been shadowing me on the film and I felt maybe it was time for him to get out there," she says. A bonus is that he's from San Francisco where Tilo's spice shop in located. He sees it as a unique way of telling an immigrant's tale, with a mix of magic and realism. He didn't even shy away from a potentially controversial, but still chaste by western standards, love scene involving the Queen of Bollywood and former Miss World, Aishwarya Rai.
She shares a romance with an American architect (Dylan McDermott) over the counter in her store, where she finds the remedy with her spices for the problems of any customer who walks through the door.
"They couldn't physically touch the whole way through. I didn't want to be explicit in the love scene but do something that was sensual," says Berges. "We have tried to be faithful to the novel, faithful to the essence of the novel. In some ways with the novel you could be more magical. When we read it we said this is a quintessential immigrant's tale but told as a fable." Chadha can see a common theme with their other work "The film is like Bend It Like Beckham in that it's about a woman who wants to do what she wants to do but tradition doesn't allow her to be herself," she says.
A spice advisor was employed on the film but Berges says they've taken some liberties with the properties of certain spices. The spice shop itself was recreated in a studio in the Isle of Man. Financing meant the film was shot there as well as in Ealing Studios outside London, San Francisco and Kerala in India - although it was made as a British film. Chadha couldn't resist helping to stock the shelves in the store, making a huge vat of chillie pickle, as well as a big curry for everyone in the crew. The smell of the spices became a problem because they couldn't open doors on the set for fear the spices would blow away.
* The Mistress Of Spices opens in cinemas tomorrow.
Published: 20/04/2006
