A moveable feast

Agleaming knife cuts effortlessly through a charred brisket to reveal a juicy and glistening pink interior. The meat is quickly sliced up, piled on to fluffy white bread, slathered in rich butter, laden with pickles, topped with stretchy, melty cheese and toasted gently; a sandwich fit for the gods.

While some could call this a slice of heaven, I had friends watching this scene with expressions of misery, for this was extreme food porn designed to torture all those who love to eat. Even as the gorgeous Scarlett Johansson and Sofia Vergara slurp up fresh-from-the-stove herby pasta or dig into a melty, cheesy Cuban sandwich, strangely enough, your attention is drawn away from these beautiful women — to what they are eating. In Jon Favreau’s Chef, the screen is set ablaze by the food that is in turns sexy, playful, nostalgic, homely, sophisticated and always delicious. While the film itself is not without its flaws, the food that Jon Favreau pays homage to, is most definitely flawless. From the exquisite farm-fresh and inspirational dishes crafted in his tiny home kitchen and presented on rustic wooden platters — the meal that could have impressed internet millionaire and food critic Ramsey Michel, once and for all — to a simple, buttery, three-cheese grilled sandwich that chef Carl Casper makes for his son, every dish is honest and intends to please the person it is created for. Casper’s journey from chef de cuisine at a celebrated LA restaurant to an out-of-work internet joke and, eventually, a food truck hero, is one of discovery and love — of both the culinary and the human sort.

Jon Favreau’s Chef celebrates food, and there is a beating heart at the squishy centre of this indie offering that is bound to leave you feeling warm and very, very hungry. This little film from the director renowned for his big-ticket outings like Iron Man follows in the tradition of Chocolat (directed by Lasse Hallstrom, 2000), Julie and Julia (by Nora Ephron, 2009), Woman on Top (by Fina Torres, 2000), Eat Drink Man Woman (by Ang Lee, 1994), Like Water for Chocolate (by Alfonso Arau, 1992), Babette’s Feast (by Gabriel Axel, 1987), and the delightful, animated classic Ratatouille (by Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava, 2007), among others.

This mix of big studio Hollywood films as well as indie and foreign cinema has a common thread. All of them capture the interplay between the cultural, emotional, sensual and extremely visual aspects of food. Cooking and eating remain at the centre of the narrative, while cultural mores, myth, love, loss, sex and humour are stirred in as the secondary ingredients into food films.

Just like Chef Carl Casper, other underdogs of the culinary world include Remy the rat from Ratatouille, whose biggest dream is to cook, and Julie Powell from Julie & Julia, who wants to transform her life through the magic of Julia Child’s recipes. These characters overcome great odds with determination, spirit, a little love from food critics, a friendly chef or two and the internet. Their stories are ones that inspire you to take that first step, to get off the edge of a first floor sublet above a grimy pizza parlour in Queens to do what you’ve always wanted to do.

Food can be used as a device that intertwines myth, storytelling, culture and community. In Chocolat Juliet Binoche’s Vianna Rocher mixes together her decadent chocolate-filled confections in a little French town under the disapproving aegis of its stern mayor, stirring up emotions and unravelling the true nature of people who live together in this apparently tight-knit community. Sometimes food enters the realm of magic realism, to portray the protagonist’s emotions, be it love, lust, betrayal or sadness. The food that Tita cooks at her lover’s wedding feast causes sickness as well as great longing in the hearts of all those who eat it in Like Water for Chocolate. It is as much a reflection of her Mexican heritage as it is of her own personal dilemma. An enchanted crab and a stunning Penelope Cruz, clad in tomato red dresses (probably the only saving grace of the film), cook up a sensual repast that make strangers fall in love in Woman on Top.

Food can be the connection and the bridge between estranged lovers, family members and members of a community. There is nothing more comforting than the warmth of a large family meal, and it is this idea that forms the central tenets of Babette’s Feast and Eat Drink Man Woman. From lives and worlds as far apart as a small village on the Jutland coast in Denmark to Taipei, Taiwan, food plays the common role of a healing salve as well as the glue that holds families together. Thus Babette’s marvellous feast costing 10,000 francs and featuring quail with foie gras and truffle sauce, a blue cheese, fig, papaya, grape and pineapple platter, turtle soup, endive and walnut salad and rum cake with glaceed fruits is hardly all that different from Mr Chu’s extravagant dinners for his daughters, where he whips up delicacies like steamed chicken with black mushroom, stir-fried clams, shrimp and water chestnut croquettes and San Pei chicken from the fish he has farmed and chickens he has bred to meet his own high standards.

Chef is, mostly, a worthy successor of these films. It draws on many of their tropes and whips them together with a dollop of New Orleans jazz, Latin dance music, Facebook updates and Twitter feeds, making it a delectable all-American concoction about the indomitable human spirit. And as Chef Carl, his sous chef Martin and his son, 10-year-old Percy, lip sync through the brass band version of Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing in their food truck, riding across America, selling their food dream, we realise that we have bought into it as well.

( Diya Kohli is a Bangalore-based writer )

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