There is a magnificent tradition of films about food, from Babette's Feast to Big Night, Tampopo to The Lunch Box, films that communicate food as moreish delight, object of obsession and sensorial arena for love, lust or social warfare.
But as much as Lasse Hallström may feel he's ticking all the boxes in order to join the top table of foodie films, there are ingredients in his recipe that seriously sour its charm.
The film is based on the novel by Richard Morais, set in a sleepy French village and concerning the culinary and culture class divide between a Michelin-starred purveyor of haute cuisine and an Indian family restaurant that opens across the street.
At the centre of the story is Hassan Kadam (Manish Dayal), whose family have been forced to flee their Mumbai home when their restaurant is burned to the ground by political extremists, Hassan's mother dying in the flames. He has inherited her considerable culinary skills; and while his father, known simply as Papa (Om Puri), is the entrepreneur and driving force of the new Maison Mumbai, it's Hassan who runs the kitchen.
The supercilious Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren), owner of Le Saule Pleureur, is irked by the very idea of a rival; that it's not French galls her Gallic sensibility further, as do the spicy smells and Indian disco that disrupt her establishment's sterile refinement. She resorts to dirty tricks pretty quickly, but finds a stubborn adversary in Papa, who declares that he'll "turn the music down, and turn the heat up".
There's plenty to appreciate in the film's early stages: the pathos of this sweet, itinerant Indian family bearing its tragic loss with dignity, the broad comedy provided by the inestimable old salt Puri (whose golf ball nose provides its own mirth) and the budding romance between Hassan and Madame Mallory's sous chef Marguerite (Charlotte Le Bon). The scenes in the Indian kitchens of Mumbai and the French village whet the appetite and make one wish something had been made of Smell-o-Vision back in the day.
But then the story takes a serious misstep, by suggesting a lack of faith in the very food it's been making so seductive. Hassan decides that the only way he will develop as a chef is if Madame Mallory takes him under her wing, he learns the French way of cooking and helps her to win more Michelin stars. And this switch in emphasis from a comic battle of wits and taste buds to Hassan's dull transformation into a cooking sensation is disastrous. Not only does the style of the film adopt the glossy veneer of the new, media-driven world in which Hassan finds himself, with little in the way of irony, but all delight in food vanishes.
It's odd that a foodie film can become so galling. But despite Hassan's continued use of his mother's spice box, the insinuation that a chef will only be taken seriously if paying lip service to the French tradition makes the film guilty of the same cultural imperialism of which Michelin has long been accused.
And this from a production that can't even be bothered to cast a Frenchwoman in the role of Madame Mallory. Mirren is fine, but given the significance of culture to the story, authentic casting was called for; Catherine Deneuve, for example, would have been spectacular.
Hallström made a pig's ear of another food-centred adaptation, Chocolat. With this, he's somehow managed to cook up a romantic comedy that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.
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