THE HUNDRED FOOTJOURNEY

In honor of the late Anthony Bourdain, I watched THE HUNDRED FOOT JOURNEY last night for the first time. I skipped it when it came out because of the terrible title and my guess that Helen Mirren, despite her acting genius, was a bit miscast. The title is still uninviting, and Mirren is miscast yet she mostly pulls off the role of a brittle French matron.

But like many movies that feature food and cooking as the central metaphor, this flick is sensually satisfying in so many ways it was worth watching. Part of the pleasure was also the delicious leading man, Manish Doyal, and his romantic partner Charlotte Le Bon. Another was the great actor Om Puri, who not only held his own with Mirren but pretty much stole the film in terms of performances.

Despite a predictable and even contrived script (a Steven Knight adaptation), the pacing and story development work because of director Lasse Halstrom, who makes even the obvious appealing. Check it out if you've never seen it.