#films #food: Five Fine Films About Food
The Trip To Italy, Life Is Sweet, The Menu, Theatre of Blood, Kitchen
#films #food: Five Fine Films About Food.
The inexplicable worldwide success of series such as The Great British Bake Off is clearly due to the end of pier show- offs that clutter up such chewing gum for the mind rather than the quality of the food on show. To paraphrase Elvis Costello, ‘Making a TV show about cooking is like is like dancing about architecture.’ However, whatever the art form, it’s all about its execution and food and its various related industries has proven to be great inspiration for many talented types, as the brilliant and deservedly lauded TV series The Bear has shown. And here are a few, ahem, tasty food related films.
The Trip To Italy is a mockumentary that follows two smarty pants actors – Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon – as they swan around Italy dining in fancy restaurants and staying in posh hotels all at the BBC license payors expense. It should be unbearably smug, in fact it should be unbearable but it is, in fact, a joy thanks to Coogan and Brydon who play off each other’s real life personas brilliantly.
Let’s be honest, gourmet’s have always seemed like gross, venal, disgusting creatures, even before the Monty Python team created Mr Creosote. In Theatre of Blood, we get a high-camp serial killer romp about a ham, ahem, actor who decides to kill of a bunch of critics. A victimless crime then. This is a breathless satire of most of humanities worst traits, snobbery, egoism, jealousy … The film is a joy, of course emboldened with brilliant scenery chewing performances from Vincent Price and Robert Morley in the now legendary Titus Andronicus sequence.
The Menu (2022) A particularly unpleasant group of people are invited to a remote island for a clandestine meal prepared by a legendary cook. And then things spiral way out of control. Like a cross between an Agatha Christie novel and Sartre’s In Camera, The Menu is a brilliant cruel and painfully funny slicing up of society with great performances, in particular, from Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy.
Although the auteur theory is clearly a crock of ageing fanboy tommy-rot, film director Mike Leigh would seem to fit that category whether working on the small or big screen. Other people’s films can even be described as Mike Leigh-esque. With the brilliant Life Is Sweet, Leigh tells the story of a working class cook and his family living in north London. Pipe dreams and shattered dreams abound in a wonderfully bittersweet comedy drama, that has a hell of a lot of warmth. The performances are all pitch perfect too.
The unfortunately named Banana Yoshimoto wrote the novel Kitchen in 1988. It’s a flimsy but likeable posh soap opera and in 1993 it was made into a film. Like the novel, Kitchen the film is affably quirky with a touching look at the quirky characters relationships and an almost fetishist look at the craft of food preparation.
If you have any other suggestions, please feel free to comment below. I don’t bite.
© Paul D. Brazill
Wanted: one helluva sexy chewer! … This is good film research for something I have in the pan. They don’t appear as often as they should 🥰… Thank you such a wonderful post. 🙌 - Adding to watchlist.! :“ This is a breathless satire of most of humanities worst traits, snobbery, egoism, jealousy … The film is a joy, of course emboldened with brilliant scenery chewing performances from Vincent Price and Robert Morley in the now legendary Titus Andronicus sequence.”
Very nice work, Paul.