A Chef in Love Reviews

This 1996 Oscar-nominee for Best Foreign Film is a whimsical, comic love story that tries to pass itself off as superior foreign filmmaking, but audiences won't be fooled. It begins in Paris, when the elderly Marcelle Ichac (Micheline Presle, the young wife of the original DEVIL IN THE FLESH) contacts Anton Gogoladze (Jean-Yves Gautier), who's in town mounting an exhibition of paintings from the former Soviet Georgia. She needs help in translating passages from her uncle Pascal 's (Pierre Richard) manuscripts and letters, and through them we're transported from the gray, cheerless Paris of the present to the vibrant Georgia of the 1920s, where Pascal -- an aging bon vivant, world traveler and former gigolo -- meets and romances the beautiful (and much younger) Cecilia (Nino Kirtadze) on a train. They settle in Tbilisi, where Pascal realizes his lifelong dream of opening a restaurant, and viewers are treated to a series of elaborate set pieces involving meticulously prepared foodstuffs and wine. But this is no BABETTE'S FEAST or LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE. The exotic locales, larger-than-life confrontations and "spontaneous" music can't cover up the fact that the movie's structure is flawed, from the feeble framing tale that's meant to link the past to the present to the use of food as a metaphor for love and community, which smacks of chilly calculation rather than authentic joie de vivre. Add to that the fact that the central love story is hopelessly implausible -- the largely passive Cecilia just isn't the complement to Richard's robust Pascal -- and the result isn't very tasty.