1) Julie & Julia (2009)
Julie in New York sets herself the mammoth task of cooking her way through Julia Childs' 'Mastering the art of french cooking' within a year and blogging about it. A charming and inspiring film about two women who stumble on their passion for cookery and food and the struggles they go through to achieve what they want.
2) Chocolat (2000)
A single mother and her daughter move to
a French village and open up a chocolate
shop. Cue lots of gratuitous shots of
melting chocolate. Towards the end of the
film the village priest Reynauld breaks into
the shop. After fasting for days during
Lent, he stuffs his face on the chocolate
Easter display and falls asleep. Gorging
on chocolate after a period of abstinence,
we've all been there.
we've all been there.
3) Eat drink man woman (1994)
A Taiwanese film about food and family.
Despite losing his taste buds, the head chef cooks dinner of epic proportions every sunday night for his wife and three unappreciative daughters. I found the care and attention the chef put in to making these delicious meals for his family very endearing.
4) Waitress (2007)
Waitress Jemma is unhappily married, pregnant and trapped in an abusive relationship with her husband. She has a talent for baking imaginative pies such as 'I hate my husband pie'.
5) Ratatouille (2007)
A rat named Remy dreams of becoming a great French chef and ends up in a restaurant in Paris. Because of his passion for good food, he inadvertantly helps kitchen boy Linguini start a career as a Chef. A film about a rat cooking - promoting good food hygiene? no, cute? definitely.
A note on Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
The scene in which the family sit down for a dinner of fried chicken and salad caused us to pause the film and promptly drive to KFC for a fried chicken dinner of our own.
Great films with lots of tasty food! It funny, given that I love food and love films, but have never really thought about putting them together. My favourite from the ones listed is Waitress, it's a bittersweet tale of broken love and sublimely good pie. A couple I'd add would be Delicatessen and Like Water for Chocolate. Delicatessen is by the guy who directed Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet), I think it's probably the one he made his name with outside of France. Anyway, it's about a society in which food is so scarce it basically becomes like money. It's really good and massively oddball, with some of the best of his trademark sequences of cause and effect, building up into hilariously calamitous finales. Like Water for Chocolate, from the novel of the same name, is all about making food rule the emotions. If you ever doubted the power of food to move you, you need to watch this flick.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your recommendations Andy! I'd really like to see Like Water for Chocolate, i'm not sure why i didnt watch it when it was released all those years ago. I might have to get the book too, reading about food is just as satisfying as watching it on film.
ReplyDeleteEver seen Woman on Top starring Penelope Cruz? Ratatouille was cute until you see hundreds of mice run around!
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