Delicious (PG, 112 mins) Streaming for rent on Academy on Demand, Apple TV, AroVision, in French with subtitles
Directed by Eric Bresnard
The summer of 1789.
News of uprisings trickle out to the provinces, newspapers are thin on the ground, visitors infrequent, but there’s an awareness that the royal court might be about to collapse.
In spite of that possibility, one talented provincial chef, Pierre Manceron (Gregory Gadebois), working for the pompous, entitled Duc de Chamfort (Benjamin Lavernhe) on his vast country estate, is keen to be picked to go to the king’s court in Paris to make his name.
When the Duc entertains some Parisian nobility, Manceron cooks up a storm.
Dish after flamboyant and perfectly prepared dish is carried out of the kitchen on exquisite platters by liveried servants, each magnificent creation placed on a buffet table for the pretentious guests in their wigs and finery.
But Manceron makes one fatal mistake: he goes off-menu.
Wanting to be innovative and further display his skill, he makes an extra amuse bouche, a beautifully crafted pastry case with truffle inside and potato on top, glistening with meticulously applied glaze.
His kitchen-hand girlfriend names it Delicious.
The fops at the table scoff at Delicious.
Deriding Manceron’s efforts, they mock him for using the potato.
It’s provincial, like everything that grows below ground.
Like spoiled children, they throw the little tart and other food around and the Duc, afraid of being ostracised by the guests he’s trying to impress, sacks Manceron.
Delicious promptly takes off into new territory.
With his teenage son, Benjamin (Lorenzo Lefebvre) in tow, Manceron returns to a ramshackle inn his deceased father had owned, but he’s too humiliated and disappointed to cook again until a mysterious woman named Louise (Isabelle Carre) arrives and refuses to go away until he teaches her to cook.
Despising the concept of a woman cook, he eventually agrees but treats her with disdain.
Louise, for her own reasons, gets on in spite of Manceron’s disapproval, working with Ben to create a new kind of eating style: a restaurant where people can choose what to eat and pay according to their portion size.
The New York Times, on January 13, 2022, described Delicious as a “sweet and savoury tribute to food, pleasure and egalite at a particularly piquant moment in French history”.
An epilogue tells us the Bastille was stormed three days after the story’s ending.
Shot with wonderful light and shade, many frames composed like works of art by cinematographer Jean-Marie Dreujou, Delicious joins the ranks of foodie films such as Big Night, Chocolat, Babette’s Feast and The Menu in the way it shows food being prepared with love and precision.
It’s a particular delight for Francophiles and foodies, but others will enjoy it too.
