Bill O’Byrne’s Bargain Bin Blues: The Hundred-Foot Journey

The Hundred-Foot Journey | Value for money: $$$

• Directed by Lasse Hallström.
• Written by Steven Knight.
• Starring Om Puri, Helen Mirren, Manish Dayal, Catherine Le Bon.

PHIL vs BILL
Chocolat’s Lasse Hallstrom makes another hash of what should have been a light and frothy romp about rival restaurateurs in a French village. When widower Om Puri’s migrant Indian family opens their “Maison Mumbai” only 30 metres from Helen Mirren’s snooty Michelin star establishment, a foodie feud erupts quicker than you can say, “Ratatouille.” But the amusing clash of cultures and cuisine is soon usurped by meandering romance and the focus switching awkwardly to the Michelin ambitions of Puri’s son (Manish Dayal). Extras are similarly souffle-lite. — Phil Wakefield.

If you love food, understanding between human beings, Helen Mirren, more food, romance, beautiful cinematography, even more bloody food, France and absolutely no plot twists or turns, then this, my friend, is just the movie you have been looking for.

And whereas some heartless git, such as myself, might say, this is a saccharine, join-the-dots, no surprises kind of foodie chick-flick, others, such as my day-job boss, might say it was just beautiful and lovely and shut up.

And since she isn’t a 54-year-old man-child living with a cat, any comments which aren’t hers should probably be taken with a degree of skepticism as to their validity vis a vis the human condition and the meaningfulness of this as art.

The Hundred-Foot Journey is about a tight-knit Indian family that flees political thuggery in Mumbai and ends up, due to a mechanical breakdown and the help of kindly local Charlotte Le Bon, in a small town in southern France.

Family head (Om Puri) decides to set up his Indian restaurant in a deserted farmhouse across the road from a Michelin-starred French restaurant run by Helen Mirren. She fights dirty against the interlopers, he fights back, his son, played by Manish Dayal (“absolutely gorgeous”, according to my boss) flirts with Ms Le Bon (a more luminous version of Anne Hathaway but with a twinkle in her eye) who turns out to be a chef at the restaurant across the road.

There is a wise, hen-pecked village mayor, a naughty head chef, a bit of drama, some unrequited love and a lot of cooking.

And with food, as of late 2015, having usurped gardening as the publicly acceptable face of bourgeois lifestyle porn, there is a major focus the semi mystical qualities of ingredients, of preparation, and the act of throwing it down one’s neck.

Indeed this nonsense is a big part of the extras, with Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey crapping on at length about the importance of kai time. Did I mention they were the producers?

They might talk a lot of cock, but at least with Hollywood power hitters you know any film they’re running is going to look good and sound fantastic. It does.

Om Puri collecting food for his restaurant Maison Mumbai.

Did I mention Lasse Hallström is the director? He does a good job with that he has. (And I only recently learned he directed almost every classic Abba video of the 1970s. “Recently” as in looking in Wikipedia about 20 minutes ago to try and sound learned on the subject of Lasse Hallström. Apart from Abba, and Cider House Rules etc, I can also report with Wikipedia confidence: “His maternal grandfather, Ernst Lyberg, was the Minister of Finance in the first cabinet of Carl Gustav Ekman [1926–1928] and leader of the Liberal Party of Sweden [1930–1933]).”

Of the four Blu-ray extras, the two best are chef Anil Sharma showing how to make Coconut Chicken and a making-of which shows the amount of special effects that were used to create the setting for the restaurants and the village.

A special mention to Helen Mirren’s performance, which is imperious, funny and at times, breathtakingly good – she can let have an emotion flicker across her face for a mere instant and yet leave no doubt about what is going on.

So rating this is hard. For some folks, and I am thinking mainly gals, this is a beautiful, lyrical paean of praise to family, food, love and all that sort of thing. For oafish boors like myself who see Michelin meals as the first step on the way to creating an expensive poo, it is too lacking in the plotting or characters to be compelling.

Extra Abba bonus note: The romantically minded might enjoy this Abba clip, which is one of only about seven Abba vids that Lasse Hallström did not direct. From 1982, it was the last song Abba recorded and is as much about the end of the band as it was about the fictional characters who part after meeting on a train station. BUT in this version, which is, thanks to the genius of the Internet, the video played backwards, they actually end up meeting, so that’s nicer. It is strangely beautiful, the music works, and they still sound kind of Swedish. In a Muppets Swedish Chef kind of way …