King Georges

The joy of cooking.

(2014) Documentary (Sundance Selects) Georges Perrier, Nicholas Elmi, Eric Ripert, Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, Jean Perrier, Yvonne Perrier, Genevieve Perrier, Michael Klein, Abraham Abisaleh, Michael McDonough, Craig LaBan, Edmund Konrad, Ed Rendell, Bruce Holberg, Pierre Calmels, Lilianne Nina, Hilary Hamilton. Directed by Erika Frankel

Most of us who have never worked in a kitchen have absolutely no clue what it takes to run a fine dining establishment. When you’re running one of the most prestigious restaurants in the country, the pressure multiplies exponentially.

Georges Perrier emigrated from Lyon in hopes of founding an authentic French restaurant in the United States. He did just that but not in New York City but in Philadelphia where his Le Bec-Fin became one of the first iconic French restaurants in the country and paved the way for other French émigrés like Eric Ripert and Daniel Boulud to found similarly iconic establishments in this country.

Le Bec-Fin closed in 2013 after more than 40 years of service, and Frankel – a documentary producer making her feature film directing debut – spent three years backstage at the restaurant observing and chronicling Perrier’s somewhat abrasive manner and giving us one of the most realistic and intimate looks at what happens in the kitchen than any reality show does. You get a sense of how cramped and hot it is there; a close-up of one of the line cook’s hands reveals burns and scars a-plenty to remind us that loss of focus for even a moment can result in injury, sometimes of a serious nature.

We do get some talking head interviews from some celebrity chefs, Philly foodies and critics, former staffers from the restaurant, former Philadelphia mayor and Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell and of course Georges himself, but the real meat and potatoes of the documentary is the scenes in the kitchen where we see Georges and his sous chef Nicholas Elmi work their magic.

It is the relationship between Georges and Nicholas that is particularly compelling. Where Georges is abrasive and manic, screaming at his team when things aren’t going exactly the way he wants them to, Nicholas is much calmer and seems to connect better with the younger line cooks and chefs. Georges is very hands-on; a renowned saucier, he holds his sauces in very strict regard. When a crab cake order is messed up, he fires a new one up himself, screaming at the offending chef the entire time. He’s not above vacuuming the carpet or washing dishes.

The relationship between Georges and his restaurant is almost as compelling as that father-son mentor-apprentice relationship with Nicholas. The restaurant is Georges’ passion; his drive for perfection has cost him his family and any kind of normal life, although Georges himself ruefully says that there is nothing normal about a chef’s life because of the hours; he’s often up shopping at local markets at 4:30am after having shut the doors at the restaurant at midnight. It’s not conducive to keeping a wife and children happy when you never see them.

The movie is extremely informative, particularly when we get to see a single meal for the Delaware Valley Chaine (a sort of gourmet society) prepared for them en masse but where it falls down is in connecting us to Georges on a more personal level. I get the sense that he is a private man and that may not be a fault of the documentary entirely, but still I would have liked to have known what drove him better, particularly as he sacrificed so much for his dream. I would have also changed the soundtrack as the music was often intrusive and annoying.

Many of us think of cheesesteaks and pretzels when we think of Philly cuisine; Le Bec-Vin did a great deal to change all that. No less an august institution than the New York Times crowned that restaurant as good or better than any in New York City, which at the time was the center of the dining out universe. Times have changed however; our dining habits have become more casual and we demand less pricey fare. These changing times did in Le Bec-Fin, sadly; it was the last of its kind in the United States and as much as there was no place for it, there was a need for it whether we choose to admit it or not.

There’s something about the fine dining experience, surrounded by opulence and impeccable service with an assurance of an incredible meal, fine wine and memories that will last a lifetime. Some may look at Georges Perrier as a dinosaur but I prefer to think of him as a conservator, a man dedicated to a craft that requires patience, skill, determination and above all, passion. I’ll always regret not having visited his establishment while it was extant, but his legacy will always be in those chefs he trained to bring some of his magic to their own establishments.

REASONS TO GO: A sense of being on the inside of a real kitchen. Informative as to kitchen politics and Philly cuisine.
REASONS TO STAY: Really doesn’t give us too much depth in the portrayal of Georges. The score is a bit annoying.
FAMILY VALUES: A fair amount of profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Elmi won the Top Chef competition
CRITICAL MASS: As of 3/6/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 100% positive reviews. Metacritic: 71/100.
BEYOND THE THEATER: VOD (check your local provider)
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Jiro Dreams of Sushi
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Son of Saul

Italian for Beginners (Italiensk for begyndere)

There will be no Yankie on his cranky.

(2000) Romantic Comedy (Miramax) Anders W. Berthelsen, Anette Stovelbaek, Ann Eleonora Jorgensen, Peter Gantzler, Lars Kaalund, Sara Indrio Jensen, Karen-Lise Mynster, Rikke Wolck, Elsebeth Steentoft, Bent Mejding, Lene Tiemroth, Claus Gerving, Jesper Christensen, Carlo Barsotti, Matteo Valese, Susanne Oldenburg, Steen Svare, Alex Nyborg Madsen. Directed by Lone Scherfig

Finding love particularly when you reach a certain age can be devastating. You are already pock-marked with the scars of failed romances and broken hearts and letting others close can be tricky. For some, confidence has been so completely lost in one’s ability to be an adequate lover that even talking to someone they have a crush on can be a monumental task.

In a small Danish town there seems to be an epidemic of that kind of thing. Andreas (Berthelsen) however isn’t really on the lookout for love; he is recently widowed. A pastor, he’s been sent to the town to temporarily minister to the flock of the disgraced former Reverend Wredmann (Mejding) who heckles him mercilessly at the pulpit.

He has moved into the hotel managed by Jorgen Mortensen (Gantzler) who has been given the task to fire his close friend Hal-Finn (Kaalund) who manages the hotel’s bar but seems clinically unable to be nice to people. Jorgen can’t really bring himself to do it. He also has fallen hard for Giulia (Jensen), the comely waitress in the bar who speaks no Danish. Hal-Finn advises Jorgen to attend the beginning Italian class at the local adult education center but when the teacher (Valese) dies suddenly, the class is left without a teacher and because attendance is nearly non-existent there really isn’t much inspiration for anyone to step in and take over.

In the class is Karen (Jorgensen) the local hairdresser who is the caretaker for an elderly mother with dementia and Olympia (Stovelbaek), a pastry chef who takes clumsy to new standards. All six of these lost and lonely people will find each other in a class where not only are they learning a new language but learning to love as well.

Scherfig was the first woman in the influential Danish cinematic movement Dogme 95. Basically advocates of stripping down film to its basics, Dogme 95 eschew camera tricks, post-production and special effects in favor of hand-held cameras, live music during filming and concentration on story and character. It is a precursor to other similar movements including mumblecore.

Most of the Danish Dogme 95 films prior to this were melancholic affairs in the Scandinavian ethos. That Scherfig went the romantic comedy route was a bit surprising and controversial (fellow Dogme 95 adherent Lars von Trier criticized her for filming a story about romance that had resolution but Scherfig replied that this was her style) but the way she approaches her movie certainly seems to fall within the parameters of the style.

These are definitely realistic people, some (in the case of the boorish Hal-Finn) less nice than others. Jorgen is shy and a bit plodding in his romance of Giulia while Andreas’ slow warming to Olympia is handled with what seems to be a great deal of affection on the part of the director. In fact, she seems to have a lot of affection for all her characters – in an interview, she has said that while most audiences want to be like the characters onscreen, her onscreen characters want to be like the audience. Here, she succeeds in that attempt.

Most of the actors are unfamiliar to American audiences at any rate but they all create characters with a good deal of depth and a good deal of realism. Likely you’d find yourself being irritated at Hal-Finn while watching a sporting event in the pub, while you might snicker at Olympia’s klutziness in the local pastry shop, or feel sympathy for Karen as she tells you about her mother’s latest and how hard it is to find good men around here.

That’s really where this film excels, in creating an atmosphere that’s familiar and heart-warming. You feel like you’re a part of the town and that these are people that even if you don’t know well are at least familiar to you in your day-to-day life. We are given a little bit of insight into who they are and how they live and in doing so we find that they are not all that unfamiliar to how we live and who we are. Inside like that is much more valuable than it appears to be on the surface of it.

WHY RENT THIS: Believable characters and story. Sweetness, heart and a touch of real people trying to find love and reinvent themselves.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: May be too low-key for some.

FAMILY VALUES: There are some salty words here and there as well as some sexuality.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: To date the highest grossing Danish film in the American market.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $16.4M on a $1M production budget.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: O’Horten

FINAL RATING: 6.5/10

NEXT: Underworld

The Great New Wonderful

Maggie Gyllenhaal and Edie Falco share a tense lunch.

(First Independent) Maggie Gyllenhaal, Tony Shalhoub, Olympia Dukakis, Edie Falco, Judy Greer, Will Arnett, Jim Gaffigan, Naseerudin Shah, Stephen Colbert, Sharat Saxena, Tom McCarthy, Billy Donner. Directed by Danny Leiner

New York City is without a doubt one of the greatest cities in the world. It throbs with the vitality of its citizens, and as the song says, never sleeps. One day in 2001 would change the meaning of what it is to be a New Yorker forever.

A year after that day, the citizens of New York are getting on with their lives for the most part. Sandie (Gaffigan) is talking to a somewhat unorthodox psychiatrist (Shalhoub) about anger issues which Sandie doesn’t think he has. With each session, Sandie becomes more and more frustrated and his anger seems to be more directed at the doctor than culled from some internal reservoir.

David (McCarthy) and Allison (Greer) are the young parents of Beelzebub, otherwise known as Charlie (Donner). Their young son has been acting out and these actions have grown exponentially worse as time has gone by. They are beginning to realize that he is becoming beyond their ability to control and as a result, their marriage is suffering. The headmaster (Colbert) of the exclusive private school they have sent him to is expelling him for his behavior and they have no idea what to do with their child.

Emme (Gyllenhaal) is an up-and-coming pastry chef in New York’s cutthroat bakery market and looks to unseat Safarah Polsky (Falco) as the reigning queen of the scene. Her ambition is driving her to use means both fair and foul to reach her goals, and she is unknowing or uncaring of the toll it takes on those who work with her, live with her or purchase her products.

Judy (Dukakis) lives with her husband across the East River in Brighton Beach in the borough of Brooklyn. Each night she fixes him dinner, then after eating makes collages while he smokes out on the balcony. Her re-connection with an old friend will open new doors and awaken new feelings of sensuality in her.

Two Indian-born New York resident security guards – Avi (Shah) and Satish (Saxena) have been given the assignment of watching over a dignitary from their native land while he is in New York to make a speech at the United Nations. Avi is carefree, joyful and humorous; his buddy Satish is dour, grumpy and prone to outbursts of rage. It’s hard to believe these two are neighbors, let alone friends.

All five of these stories carry little in common other than that they are set in New York a year to the month of the World Trade Center attack, and that all ten of the main characters share an elevator near the end of the movie. It is up to us to thread these stories together and quite frankly, it’s a bit of a stretch.

What one notices most is the emotional disconnect prevalent in almost all of the stories. The characters have latched onto some sort of idea or emotion and are holding onto it with a death grip, to the exclusion of all else. The self-absorption needed for this kind of focus is staggering, and yet those familiar with the New York of Woody Allen or The New Yorker magazine will not find it particularly far-fetched.

There is a routine also in each one of the main character’s lives and that routine is either a source of comfort or a fiendish trap. Breaking out of that routine seems to be, at least I’m guessing here, what the filmmakers suggest is the key to finding happiness, solace, call it whatever you want.

This is a very impressive cast for a micro-budget indie drama and they live up to their reputations for the most part. The vignette with the least-known actors in it (at least to those not familiar with Indian cinema), the one regarding Avi and Satish, was my own personal favorite as I found Avi to be the least hung-up of the main characters here.

I admit to having a certain fascination with everyday life in the Big Apple. I fully realize I don’t have the equipment to live there myself – it takes a certain kind of person to handle the pace and the feeling of being alone in a crowd that goes hand-in-hand with the NYC lifestyle. Still, I admire those who have what it takes and certainly New York offers perhaps the most attractive and varied choices for those who live there. I’m not sure if The Great Big Wonderful offers me any further insight into the psyche of New York, nor how it was affected by 9-11, but it does offer a nice visit to that town; I’m just not sure I would want to live there.

WHY RENT THIS: A solid cast gives solid performances. Some of the vignettes are interesting.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Not all of the vignettes hold my attention. The linking thread is tenuous at best; this is certainly much more of a New York story than anything else.

FAMILY VALUES: There’s a fairly significant amount of salty language in the movie as well as a small amount of sexuality. Much more suitable for a mature audience.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Director Leiner is best known for comedies like Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and Dude, Where’s My Car.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

FINAL RATING: 5/10

TOMORROW: 12