My Mother the Film Critic

Blade Runner, Mommie Dearest, Throw Momma from the Train.

Each chapter of Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother, Priscila Uppal’s deeply thoughtful and carefully constructed memoir, refers to a film.

Two staggering traumas shaped Priscila Uppal’s childhood and youth. When she was two years old, and her brother, Amerjit, three, their father, Arvat, an Indian immigrant to Canada, an up-and-coming civil servant, “tall-dark-and-handsome,” in a matter of 48 hours became a paraplegic. Five years later Priscila and Amerjit’s beautiful mother, the daughter of the Brazilian military attaché, emptied the family bank account, surreptitiously packed her bags, attempted but failed to force Amerjit into a waiting car, and fled to Brazil, leaving behind her two children, aged eight and nine, to care for their invalid father.

Leap ahead 20 years. Priscila, now an acclaimed poet, novelist and academic, stumbles upon the website of her vanished...