Deepa Mehta’s Cooking with Stella: A Cinematic Intersection of Delicacies, Dreams, and Diplomacy

Abstract

This paper analyzes Cooking with Stella as a film that intertwines food with themes of class, gender, and cultural interaction. It explores how culinary practices function as symbolic and material tools that reveal social hierarchies and personal aspirations. Using a cinematic lens, the study demonstrates how food becomes a medium to negotiate identity, power, and cross-cultural relationships.