One of the drivers plays bass, a soundman is on drums, and star Bruce Greenwood – still in costume, lit by a key light in a cold and otherwise empty soundstage – is belting out the second verse of Hotel California.

‘He formed the band right after we started shooting,’ a PA yells over the thunderous soft rock. ‘I hear he does this on pretty much all of his shoots, and they play like this every day. They’re pretty good, don’cha think?’

It’s mealtime on the set of The Republic of Love and, in the next room, cast and crew are chowing down on rubber chicken and soda while Greenwood, who plays a mean lead guitar, sings about pink champagne on ice. He and his ad hoc band have been at it for about 20 minutes and can be heard clear across the lot at Canada Square Studios in Toronto’s west end.

Shooting will wrap in two days, just before the holidays, and the set is accordingly hectic, food and free concert notwithstanding. It’s been an hour since director Deepa Mehta would be with me in ‘just five minutes’ and, at a nearby lunch table, three prop guys are busily fiddling with an airplane wheel that makes an appearance in the third act. The PA soon runs off with her shoulder-load of cable.

It took a long time for Republic to get here. Rights for the Carol Shields novel got snapped up right after its 1992 publication, but the project lingered in development for the remainder of the decade – passing from Winnipeg-based producer Bruce Duggan to Toronto’s Triptych Media, which struck and then abandoned two U.K. coproduction deals before finally settling down with Dan Films of London. The script, which follows the love affair of idealistic Fay (The Pianist’s Emilia Fox) and late-night DJ Tom (Greenwood, of Ararat and Thirteen Days), also took a lot of work.

‘I wrote the script from scratch,’ says Mehta, later, on the set of Fay’s cozy Toronto apartment. ‘I loved the book but the [first] script didn’t appeal to me.’ She wrote a second draft at the behest of producer Anna Stratton, but then-copro partner Renaissance Films didn’t like it and brought in writer Esta Spalding (Da Vinci’s Inquest, The Zack Files) to pen a third. Renaissance then dropped out, and both women collaborated on a fourth version last January, which finally went to camera in November on a $5-million budget.

Like her recent Bollywood/Hollywood, the light romance breaks from Mehta’s earlier, more serious films such as Fire and Earth. ‘It’s not a romantic comedy, it’s a romantic drama,’ she offers, ‘but yes, it is light and it is about the nature of love… Bollywood/Hollywood was a no-holds-barred comedy, but this is more whimsical.’

Mehta is again working with Bollywood DOP Doug Koch and the small cast is rounded out by screen veteran Claire Bloom, Gary Farmer, Jackie Burroughs and Fox’s real-life father Edward Fox (Nicholas Nickleby). Triptych’s Stratton (The Hanging Garden) and Julie Baines (The Cat’s Meow) of Dan Films produce and a release is planned for next winter through Seville Pictures in Canada and Helkon SK in the U.K.

This particular set – a book-strewn flat that’s almost the exact same color as a blood orange – will be struck tonight and rebuilt as Tom’s bachelor pad for the last two days of shooting. One of the last scenes, number 121, in which Tom and Fay meet outside her apartment door, wrapped just before lunch.

‘I can’t believe we’re done in two days,’ says Greenwood to no one in particular between takes. ‘It doesn’t feel like we’ve done enough to make a movie yet.’

Mehta does not look up from her monitor, and asks for another take. ‘For good luck, please.’

‘A house of cards’

Baines is confident that the film will play well with mainstream audiences in Canada and Britain, adding that Mehta’s script and direction have preserved the quirky humor of the book, ‘which sets it aside from a straightforward romantic comedy,’ she says. ‘It’s got a much more original voice than that.’

‘It’s a little bit Woody Allen, a little bit Jane Austen,’ adds Stratton.

But lack of funding forced a few changes. Telefilm Canada turned down a request for more cash in May, scrapping plans to shoot the Winnipeg-set story in Manitoba. The setting and shoot moved to Toronto, where production was then pushed back from summer to late fall. This was a problem, given that the story takes place over a full year. The crew would almost certainly have to shoot summer scenes around some very inclement weather.

‘It was a house of cards. We went along hoping to get everything into place, but we couldn’t commit to going ahead until October, and that changed the whole look of the film,’ says Stratton. ‘We needed to find a way to shoot in the winter but still create something that had scope and space.’

Mehta and Koch came up with the idea of shooting in the many interconnected pedestrian tunnels that, as in Winnipeg, are hidden below ground in Toronto.

‘It gave us the idea of these people living in a very urban environment which is connected by all these concourses and subways and causeways,’ says Stratton, adding that the book repeatedly plays with the image of its characters moving and meeting on a giant grid. ‘Tom and Fay meet each other through this grid. They’re linked, not just geographically, but they’re linked by friends.’

The producers made a few more changes. Fay’s character dropped from her 40s to her 30s, to avoid that tired old ‘body clock thing,’ says Baines, and Tom’s musical tastes were updated. The new Tom is into Britpop and underground DJs. So if Greenwood wants to play The Eagles, he’ll have to do it on his own time.