Film Review: Haute Cuisine

by Brandon Wainscott

This film, which I watched a month or so ago, is in French, something I myself always love. Foreign films, despite having to read watching a movie, often are hidden little jewels. After watching Mads Mikkelsen pull off an interesting Hannibal Lecter in NBCs series, I was glad to see a couple films with the Danish actor in his own language. The Hunt showed the other side of the oft over-dramatic Law and Order: SVU hammer-of-perverts crime show; for in The Hunt a man is falsely accused of molesting a young girl, having to live through the hell of being seen as a pervert. And then Mikkelsen does a wonderful job in the historical drama, A Royal Affair, a rather overly preachy movie glorifying the French Revolution, but wonderfully acted with the sexy Alicia Vikander as the king's wife, Caroline and the talented Mikkel Boe Følsgaard playing the weak, mentally ill King Christian VII. Mikkelsen leaves the sociopathic Hannibal Lecter for a compassionate doctor and libertine. And thus my praise of foreign film. Today, and as all future reviews, I am reviewing a film related to the subject of this blog, food and wine. The film is Haute Cuisine, which is called in the original French: Les saveurs du Palais.  It stars and elegant Catherine Frot as the president's personal chef and Jean d'Ormesson as the president himself. 

The English title is somewhat unfavourable. The whole film is about why French food should not be haughty after all, but the English title is not the fault of the makers of the film since they titled it, if it were translated directly: The Flavours of the Palace. Miss Frot plays Madame Hortense Laborie, a sort of foodie, elegant yet unaffected. When the film begins she is living in the country managing a farm to satisfy her love of good food, hunting truffles and raising livestock. She is then approached by a government official, taken in a humorous journey to Paris where she has little idea of the purpose. There she is told she will be personal chef to the president. 

She quickly comes head to head with the head chef of the kitchen who seems to be angry that a woman with no formal training is allowed there and is now the president's personal chef. She herself is in another kitchen, generally free from him, and she quickly imposes her beliefs against the usual rules. However, the president, played charmingly by Jean d'Ormesson, shares her views of food, liking that which that lacks the haughtiness of Parisian cuisine, preferring like her, what we Americans would call down home cooking. To the normal American the food  is certainly high class, but though there is indeed an elegance to it, the idea is simplicity--fresh, high quality ingredients skillfully made without pretentiousness. The president explains he is growing tired of all the fancy dishes arranged more for their art than their love. Indeed in the end we see that is how she makes her food--with love, like a mother.

In fact, to show this, the film is really flashbacks to her days working at the state palace in France because when the film begins she is in Antartica at a French settlement. She is shown to be a woman that has become a mother to all the workers there. They have come to enjoy the cuisine she has made with love. Thus there is a moving goodbye to her as she goes back to France and elsewhere in the world to hunt for truffles.

So the film is not about haughty, or as haute is transliterated, high cuisine. It is about the opposite. It is what Julia Child wanted us to see about French cooking. Thus the English title is really unfitting,  though I suppose it does work to draw a person to the film. I would not have been as quick to watch it on Netflix if it had been called "The Flavours of the Palace". 

 I will give it the same score I gave it on Netflix: five out of five stars for "loved it".