Interior design firm Yabu/Pushelburg’s Toronto offices, located in the downtown film studio district, have never looked so grisly. Plastic limbs in a small adjoining room are visible from the reception area, where neat metal trays are laid out with clinical instruments, and a painting depicting an elbow joint hangs cheerily on the wall behind a stretcher carrying (what appears to be) a dead body.

This is not a b-movie horror flick, nor is it a medical tv drama. It’s the set of Srinivas Krishna’s new feature, A Promise of Heaven. We’re in Dunkel’s office, and he’s in the business of body parts. To say more about this macabre scene is to delve into plot elements Krishna says he cannot reveal until the film’s release.

The five-week shoot of A Promise of Heaven is more than half over and the crew has had a few surprises.

On the second and third nights of filming in early March, when the temperature dropped to about 14 below, the exteriors called for rain. Salt trucks came in to keep the manufactured rain from freezing, and still some crew members were covered in ice.

‘I was an icicle,’ says Krishna. ‘I had no idea what it meant to shoot rain and Paul (Sarossy, the film’s dop) told me that I better get some rain gear. He put the fear of God into me. I’m glad he did it because I was just a big block of ice.’

About a week later, the shoot was set for an alleyway at Queen and Spadina, with an elaborate crane shot which starts with a man lying in a patch of snow and blood. The script called for snow that night, but since it was about 15 above, instant potato flakes and wind machines were brought in. ‘It was absurd,’ says Krishna, ‘but otherwise (the shoot) has gone pretty much as planned.’

One crew member comments on the elaborate setups and shots Krishna and Sarossy get into, but Krishna doesn’t instantly recognize them as anything out of the ordinary.

‘I haven’t worked on other people’s films, so I don’t know what is and what is not elaborate,’ he says. He thinks back to the snow and crane shot, which incorporates a network of action including police cars, a close-up of a character and an argument which takes place between Saeed Jaffrey and a policeman.

‘If I were to think of it as elaborate, I probably wouldn’t do it. For me, it seems not that complicated. But if I were standing on the roof watching what we were doing, it would certainly seem elaborate – downright absurd, actually,’ he says.

There is no mention of the 300-foot tracking shot at another location, thought to be the longest tracking shot in Canadian film history.

This is Krishna’s second feature. His first, Masala, was also shot by Sarossy and most of the crew from that film is working on A Promise of Heaven, including production designer Tamara Deverell, cowriter (with Krishna) Robert Armstrong and editor Michael Munn.

In this picture, which is less plot-driven than Masala, there’s more time to explore character and frame, says Krishna. ‘I try and aim for a greater precision. On Masala there were so many things happening at once, a lot of the film (shoot) was just moving through the plot. This one is a lot more paced. One thing I’m really exploring is the quality of the frame, alternating between absolutely flat frames to a whole vista.’

One example is from the Art Gallery of Ontario shoot where Andy Warhol’s Four Elvis Presleys was shot to fill the whole frame. ‘That kind of flatness is really exciting and you don’t see it exploited,’ says Krishna.

He is also using video in the film – something he has done in virtually every film he’s made – this time, for a low-rent style documentary.

‘Something about video is very flat, too. I am also using the zoom in this film. I know it fell out of favor but I’m using it very selectively, again exploring that kind of depth that turns into flat pictorial imagery,’ he says.

Krishna was doing a release of Masala in London, Eng. and visiting family when the premise for A Promise of Heaven came to him. He can’t say what it is, only that it is ‘one of the most horrific artifacts of the late 20th century I’ve seen.’

The plot revolves around Lulu, a Vietnamese woman working at a perfume counter in Toronto. ‘Everything that my character hopes for doesn’t come true. That is the most central thing,’ says Krishna.

The director auditioned a few hundred Vietnamese women in the States and in Canada before he came upon Kim Lieu, a virtual unknown, in Toronto in early January.

‘I was insistent on having someone Vietnamese do the part. It’s not that the fact that she is Vietnamese is essential to the story, but I think people should play who they are. I think that’s important.’

In between Masala and A Promise of Heaven – four years – Krishna traveled, started work on a novel and made a few short films in the u.s. He came back to Canada to make this film.

Even though Masala was deemed a success and showed great promise of a new talent, no one knocked on Krishna’s door in Canada.

‘The sorry fact is that after I made that film I did not get one job offer from Canada. I got several from the u.s. I don’t think anyone ever said Canada was the land of opportunity, so I’m not here for that. I can make films here that I don’t think I can make in the States.’

Why? ‘Because Telefilm, the ofdc, and Alliance (Releasing) give me so much more space to explore the cinematic art,’ he says.

The film would have been underway a year-and-a-half ago were it not for a legal battle with Camelia Frieberg, who produced Masala and was initially on board with A Promise of Heaven. There was a settlement out of court last fall and Krishna called Robert Bergman (Spike of Love) to produce. Alliance was already onside and so were the agencies, even if unofficially.

‘I was eager to make my next feature long before anyone else was eager to see it,’ says the director.

Although Masala was a critical success, the demise of Cinephile, the distribution company handling the film, meant problems for the film’s release.

‘I got stuck with a lame duck. A lot remains to be seen from Canadian distributors and I expect a lot from Alliance,’ says Krishna. ‘Canadians are renowned for their inability to sell things. I think that’s changing and that’s why I’m with Alliance.’

Norstar Entertainment now has the rights to Masala, and Krishna claims they’re doing nothing with it. ‘They should give me back my film so that I can make some money for my investors because they are just sitting on it.’

The coffee break is over and Krishna’s attention turns from the releasing of a film to the making of it. It’s back to the grisly office where Dunkel’s now-dead mother, propped up in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask and two fingers in a cast, peers over her son’s desk and watches the crew as they continue into the wee hours of the morning.