Even now, on a hot summer morning eight months after she finished shooting it, Deepa Mehta shivers every time she thinks about The Republic of Love.

‘It was so cold,’ she says with a shake. ‘That’s all I remember about that shoot – how cold it got.’

It was indeed freezing on set last December when she finally shot the long-in-the-works adaptation of the Carol Shields novel. The project had lingered in development for seven years with assorted producers and screenwriters and, at the last minute, had been pushed back one last time from a summer shoot in Winnipeg to a winter shoot in Toronto. ‘But that’s okay,’ Mehta says with a wave of the hand. ‘I wanted it set in the winter anyway.’

The picture has secured one of the much-coveted gala slots at TIFF 2003 for its world premiere, and according to frontman Piers Handling, commenting at a recent press conference, it looks to be Mehta’s best work to date.

That’s quite a compliment, considering the critical praise heaped on her early films Fire and Earth, and the considerable success of Bollywood/Hollywood. The Mehta-directed musical comedy opened last year’s Perspective Canada program to warm reviews, later besting the per-screen average of Men with Brooms and earning Mehta a best screenplay Genie Award.

‘That’s very nice that [Handling] said that, but it’s very difficult for me to say how I feel about [the film]. There are different aspects of all my films that are very dear to me,’ says Mehta, curled on the living room couch in her Toronto house. The room is orange and brown, dimly lit, and littered with exotic objets d’art. ‘The first time I see [my films] I spend so much time thinking about things I should have done and didn’t. It’s very difficult to look at objectively.’

In addition to the helming, Mehta wrote the final version of the script. It’s a romantic tale that follows the bumpy love affair between the idealistic Fay, played by Emilia Fox (The Pianist), and impulsive late-night talk show host Tom, played by Bruce Greenwood, who has been enjoying a healthy career balancing Canuck projects such as Ararat with Hollywood fare like The Core and Thirteen Days. Mehta also cast Claire Bloom, whose seven-decade career saw her costar with Charlie Chaplin, Gary Farmer (Adaptation) and Jackie Burroughs, and again teamed up with Bollywood DOP Doug Koch. The Canada/U.K. copro is produced by Anna Stratton (The Hanging Garden) of Toronto’s Triptych Media and Julie Baines (The Cat’s Meow) of Dan Films, and is distributed in Canada by Seville Pictures and internationally by the U.K.’s The Works.

No doubt the gala slot will draw a lot of attention to Republic, as will, sadly, the recent death of Shields, who succumbed to cancer in July. Mehta met Shields once for a casual chat about the story, and was struck by the author’s sense of ‘wicked’ fun. ‘She was lovely, really wonderful,’ Mehta says.

Republic will certainly build on the popular appeal Mehta established with Bollywood, and is sure to be bolstered by its recognizable cast, but the director won’t hazard a guess about its chances at the box office. ‘You never know what’s going to be a success. You just don’t know. [Bollywood/Hollywood] was very surprising. How could a comedy about brown folk be such a hit? Here or in India?’ she asks, apparently still surprised. ‘I mean, it was quirky. It had songs.’

Also surprising, considering the art-house pedigree of her earlier films, is her enthusiasm for commercial success. ‘It’s excellent to make money!’ she exclaims with a rare smile. ‘What’s wrong with that? How else are you going to gauge your popularity?’

After Toronto, The Republic of Love will open Cinefest in Sudbury, ON (Sept. 15), just as Bollywood did last year. Mehta has been going to the booming Nickeltown fete for five years and speaks fondly of its warmth and comforting feel. ‘I love it there. It’s very appealing,’ she says.

But she has little if any time for comfort. Just days after TIFF and Cinefest wrap, she’ll be on a plane to shoot her next feature in Sri Lanka. Her phone has been ringing throughout most of our interview, and now a FedEx deliverer has appeared at her front door with a package.

‘Oh great,’ she says, reading the waybill. ‘More work.’