This week’s film is Delicious, a fictional story about the creation of the first French restaurant at a country inn along a busy carriage roadway. [The real first restaurant is widely acknowledged to have opened in Paris.] In 1789, as events leading up to the French Revolution are unfolding, the story begins with an immersion into the vast workings of a castle chef as he oversees the preparations of a grand feast for his Duke. The Duke’s guests hail from Paris, and a good showing will produce an invitation to court for both the Duke and his Chef. The script quickly pokes fun at the fickle nobility and clergy as they bounce from adulation to sarcasm to scorn at the drop of a . . . potato pastry. Their capricious wrath is fixated upon the Chef, but the Duke bears the brunt of the embarrassment and demands that the Chef apologize in front of the banquet table. The Chef refuses and is fired on the spot. The Chef and his son Benjamin retreat to the decrepit and abandoned inn once operated by the Chef’s deceased father. Soon joined by a mysterious woman who offers to pay to be his apprentice, the Chef proclaims he will cook no more. Of course, there would be no more to the film if his proclamation held, but Benjamin and the apprentice convince the Chef to serve plated dinners to locals and carriage riders. Benjamin desires to break his father from the allure of a possible return to the Duke’s favor, and hence Paris, and bring his father’s food to the people. The script weaves between themes of revenge and redemption, correlating the access to the Chef’s food with the imminent rise in populist political power as it bubbles up to the revolution.
Glorious presentations of culinary delights pepper the screen throughout, washed down with a delicious flirtation between the Chef and his apprentice. The script is at its best poking fun at the nobility of the day but the dialogue lacks transitions between shifting climax and conflict plot developments resulting in our Chef appearing more schizophrenic than philosophical.
So, on my ski trail rating system, Delicious earns my intermediate Blue Ski Trail rating. This lavish period piece looks better than it tastes, with stellar costumes, culinary set design, and French country landscapes. The acting is compelling enough to overcome a script which is light on substance and walks a blurry line between triviality and themes related to the French Revolution, all the while teetering on the brink of hypocrisy while sourcing one’s joy and passion. Fans of foodie films will likely find Delicious as the cinematic emotional antithesis to Nick Cage’s Pig, and closer to No Reservations than the weightier Mostly Martha.
Delicious is streaming on various platforms in French with English subtitles, and contains language, minor violence and the food isn’t the only thing getting seared.
