ABSTRACT
Transnational Filmmaker Although Mehta recalls that she "would have died" if she had been unable to make the deeply personal sam & Me,7 the changed direction that she took following the success of that film led to a temporary dead end. sam & Me earned Mehta an honourable mention in the Camera d'or (first feature category) at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991 and a startling offer to direct
Deepa Mehta's Fire (1996), courtesy of the Film Reference Library,
first one, then another, episode of George Lucas's television series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (Benares, 1992) and Travels with Father (a movie of the week, 1994). Although these were not personal projects like Sam & Me, Mehta felt honoured to be chosen for the director role, and the experience was a pleasant one. Lucas, she says, treated her with respect and support.8 However, between the two Young Indiana Jones episodes came an offer to direct a big budget feature, Camilla (1994), a Canadian/UK co-production with stars Jessica Tandy, Bridget Fonda, and Tandy's husband, Hume Cronyn.9 Mehta liked the script. A road movie, Camilla, like Sam & Me, told of a friendship across generations – here between an elderly woman escaping a well intentioned but insensitive son, and a young woman whose personal confidence blooms under the old woman's tutelage. Shooting went so well that Mehta did not foresee what was to come: "I was naive," she later explained. "1 had assumed I'd get to see the final cut." By the time the studio had finished test marketing the film and "soliciting 'everyone's opinion,'" Camilla was "unrecognizable to her." "I learned the hard way, but it was a good lesson."10
