With Chef this year’s most heralded independent food film, here is a wonderful entry (or entree) from Director Lasse Halstrom and producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg.
The Hundred-Foot Journey (Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal, Charlotte Le Bon) – Helen Mirren has been one of the world’s great actresses for over 50 years. In The Hundred-Foot Journey, she shines bright. Mirren’s performance as Madam Mallory, owner of a much-heralded restaurant in the French countryside, seems effortless. Yet it is layered. Not many other actresses (Meryl Streep and Cate Blanchett perhaps) could pull this off with the depth and sensitivity that Mirren does.
Mirren plays a cold, precise, deliberate, prissy, and exacting restaurateur who cherishes her one-star Michelin rating. When an Indian family, displaced from their native country, buys the place across the street and opens a competing, if completely different, ethnic eatery, Mirren is both bothered and threatened. When she realizes that she has met her match in the family’s patriarch, Papa (veteran Indian actor Om Puri), Madam Mallory tries to sabotage them. This is a serious game right up to the point when young punks set the new restaurant afire.
While relationships warm, Mirren realizes that Papa’s son, Hassan (Manish Daval), is a true master chef with unique talent and unlimited potential. She hires him in Act 2. Meanwhile, Madam Mallory’s sous-chef, Marguerite (marvelous French actress Charlotte Le Bon), is both smitten with the young man but also realizes that he is her competitor, creating a rivalry that feels good but forced. The rest of the film chronicles Hassan’s journey and the deepening relationships between Papa and Mallory as well as Marguerite and Hassan.
Lasse Hallstrom, a prolific Oscar-nominated director whose previous food flick was Chocolat, capably directs this talented cast and is smart enough to let Mirren do her thing. He creates some very nice moments. The best comes when Mallory tastes an omelet created by Hassan. We see her sitting from the rear yet we can “see” her face as she tastes it. The great actress sits straighter and stretches out her neck, and we know she has just had a culinary orgasm. Marvelous.
A small film with great acting and a predictable arch, The Hundred-Foot Journey is not a gourmet movie; but it is a tremendously satisfying meal.