Film Shapes

This delicacy, directed by Tran Ahn Hung, is France's entry for best foreign language film for this year's Oscars. And it has a good shot at winning too. Disregard the awful English title - it's called La Passion de Dodin Bouffant in French - and prepare yourself for some of the most lovingly presented images imaginable.  There's an amazing extended opening that captures activity in a rustic 19th century kitchen. Eugénie (the ageless Juliette Binoche) and Dodin (Benoît Magimel) are cook and gourmet of the manor. He's smitten, has been for 20 years, but it seems Eugénie wants to keep things professional. Clearly, without her skills to complement his, he wouldn't be known as 'the Napoleon of Gastronomy'. This is only Tran's fourth film in 23 years, since he hit his peak in 2000 with The Vertical Ray of the Sun . Like that work of art, The Taste of Things is incredibly lush and evocative. Cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg's camera hovers throug...

This is a documentary about the first Muslim Arab to win Israel's Masterchef TV cooking contest, Nof Atamna-Ismaeel. and her idea of running the A-Sham Arabic food festival. This brings chefs from all over Israel - some Arab, some Jewish, some Christian - and gives them a specific Levantine dish to make that has fallen out of favour or just been forgotten. Each chef is nominated to pair up with someone from a different background, town, religion even, and herein lies the interest (great looking food notwithstanding). We get to meet about 3 main pairs, as well as a few minor 'characters' through the course of the film. I'd say the spotlight is probably on Shlomi and Ali. Shlomi is an Israeli Jew, whose grandparents came from Eastern Europe, after surviving the Holocaust, and Ali is from Ghajar, an oddly placed town, half Israeli, half Lebanese. They are tasked with making a yoghurt based delicacy called Kishek, and the intricacies of the preparation are fairly extreme. T...