Remember to have a hearty meal before you sit down for this movie. Otherwise hunger pangs will hit you within minutes.
It starts with pastry dough – hands kneading flour, egg and butter until its metamorphosis into a malleable, sticky paste, moulded and filled with gingerly cut slices of potato and truffle.
When it’s baked, it glistens from its egg wash – and if movies let you smell what you see, you bet it would smell amazing. What’s this delectable morsel called? A “Delicious”.
It’s the first of many, many frames of salivating cuisine dressed up in close-ups, wide shots or even staged like a painting that would hang in the Louvre.
If you’re hungering for a bit of food porn and a crowd-pleasing story, Delicious will satiate that appetite.
The French film is a mass appeal, boilerplate historical drama that works perfectly fine in the moment, buoyed by likeable performances from Gregory Gadebois and Isabelle Carre.
Set on the eve of the French Revolution in 1789, Delicious is centred on culinary master Pierre Manceron (Gadebois), an in-house chef for the Duke of Chamfort (Benjamin Lavernhe).
Manceron created the “Delicious” as well as all the edible delights from the gleaming copper pots, carefully arranged onto platters and served to Chamfort’s idle rich friends. The parade of mouth-watering food makes Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette look paltry.
But just as in Marie Antoinette, gluttony and playing host to the most extravagant meals comes to stand in for the profligacy of the French aristocracy while the peasants starve on rations and buckle under the strain of crippling taxation.
When Manceron is dismissed from his job because of scorn from one of Chamfort’s guests – apparently it was neither “cheeky” nor “courteous” – the chef and his son return to the ramshackle outpost from which he came.
The outpost is a simple place for weary travellers to have their horse fed and gob down a little cheese and bread.
Soon after, a woman named Louise (Isabelle Carre) shows up on Manceron’s doorstep, asking to be his apprentice. She claims to have been a jam-maker but wants to learn real cuisine techniques from the best.
Manceron is initially uninterested but begrudgingly takes her on. When he’s presented with the opportunity to win back his position with Chamfort, it’s all hands on deck, but what his son Benjamin (Lorenzo Lefebvre) really wants his father to do instead is to innovate with what they have.
Benjamin is the voice of the people in this film, part of the disaffected working class who feels the stirrings of a revolutionary spirit that we know will soon come for the heads of the rich.
Benjamin doesn’t want to see his father return to the service of a wealthy master, he wants his father to try something different with his establishment – maybe a set menu with prices, different dishes, and tables, chairs and ambience.
In short, he’s describing a restaurant.
Delicious opens its film with a title card that tells us that in this time in history, people only ever ate at home or while travelling, they never went out to eat for pleasure. The movie becomes a story about how the first restaurant was created.
In reality, the first restaurant is generally considered to be Le Grande Taverne des Londres in Paris, which opened a handful years before Delicious is set, but the film does a flavourful job of marrying an origin story of sorts with its French Revolution-adjacent historical context.
And remember to eat before you sit down, because Delicious will make you ravenous for French cuisine.
Rating: 3/5
Delicious is in cinemas from Boxing Day with advance screenings this Friday, Saturday and Sunday
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2021-12-14 07:46:16Z
CBMiiAFodHRwczovL3d3dy5uZXdzLmNvbS5hdS9lbnRlcnRhaW5tZW50L21vdmllcy9tb3ZpZS1yZXZpZXdzL2RlbGljaW91cy1pcy1hLWZlYXN0LWZvci10aGUtZXllcy9uZXdzLXN0b3J5LzlmNmU0N2ZmYzhhMmFmM2I4NDY3NzkwYWVlZmRiM2Q20gGMAWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm5ld3MuY29tLmF1L2VudGVydGFpbm1lbnQvbW92aWVzL21vdmllLXJldmlld3MvZGVsaWNpb3VzLWlzLWEtZmVhc3QtZm9yLXRoZS1leWVzL25ld3Mtc3RvcnkvOWY2ZTQ3ZmZjOGEyYWYzYjg0Njc3OTBhZWVmZGIzZDY_YW1w
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