The French comedy Le Chef creates a recipe for an enjoyable 90 minutes about culinary quirkiness and the celebrity that has put chefs in the spotlight. Le Chef opens at MDC’s Tower Theater in Miami and Regal Shadowood in Boca Raton.
As much a riff on celebrity chefs a la Alain Passard, Alain Ducase and Pierre Gagnaire or insert name here of any American chef, director and screenwriter Daniel Cohen tells the tales of two chefs, one amateur, the other a Three-Star Michelin chef, zeroing in on their separate lives that eventually converge, but not without some cage rattling on both sides.
Wanna be chef Jacky Bonnot (Michaël Youn) knows his flavors, recipes of famous chefs by heart, and is perhaps a bit too passionate about his food. He keeps getting tossed from his jobs as a cook because he refuses to make a simple Steak Frites, well, simple. The fact that he can’t keep a job gets complicated because his due-any-day-with-their-baby girlfriend Beatrice (the beautiful Raphaele Agogue) wants him to settle down.
Star chef Alexandre Lagarde (the always wonderful Jean Reno) is trying to save his reputation and his restaurant, Cargo Lagarde, as the new CEO of the group Stanislas Matter (Julien Boisselier) is trying to replace him with a more contemporary celebrity chef. Meanwhile, the chef’s daughter (Salomé Stévenin) is getting ready to present her doctoral thesis and wants her father’s full attention, something she never got as a child since it is clear that food was more his priority than family.
Some very funny scenes ensue as Jacky finds himself getting a chance at Cargo Lagarde after he gains entrance while painting the restaurant’s exterior, yet more transfixed on the goings on in the kitchen as he peers through a window.
Cohen puts his subjects in situations that call for slapstick, but he never lets the farce become so ridiculous that the believability becomes half baked. When Bonnot, dressed as a Geisha, and Lagarde as a Chinese Master go to spy on the molecular gastronomy of a younger celebrity chef, comes off more like Commedia dell’Arte than Mr. Bean. The amateur chef’s training of three line cooks at a senior citizen’s home yields a couple of fun scenes as the retirees take a shine to the perfectionist chef’s tutelage of the cooks when the appealing fare shows up at dinner time.
Reno, who is more known for playing the heavy in "The Da Vinci Code" and "Leon: The Professional," takes to the role of the chef de cuisine, adding an A stands for Alpha to the chef’s personality, yet keeping him a bit soft on the inside when his restaurant and his reputation are threatened.
Youn is Charlie Chaplin-esque in his buffoonery and sometimes often recalls the vermin in Pixar’s 2007 "Ratatouille," plus there should be an explanation of how he was able to snag his girlfriend, Beatrice, who seems more of an unlikely partnering than Lagarde taking a chance on him in his kitchen.
But there’s lots to love in Le Chef; this is a film that satisfies on many levels.
At a preview screening at Fort Lauderdale’s Cinema Paradiso, French Chef Michel Thomann, owner of Hollywood, Fla.’s F•A•C•E (an acronym for French-American Culinary Experience) Restaurant and Bar, which opened in 2012, demonstrated how to make exquisite appetizers including a Beef Carpaccio (which I was one of the lucky guests that was called upon to try the dish, Tuna Tartare and a Mango Cheese. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, Thomann’s style was a lot like the uncompromising passion both chefs exhibited in Le Chef. The "event" night for members of Cinema Paradiso and invited guests was a culinary experience through and through.
