The Hundred-Foot Journey

Lasse Hallström (My Life as a Dog, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, and The Cider House Rules) is no stranger to cultural tourism (see his 2011 film Salmon Fishing in the Yemen) or to food porn (2000’s Chocolat). He’s also increasingly become the go-to filmmaker for soft, feel-good fare aimed at audiences who don’t like to be challenged. Thus The Hundred-Foot Journey is a project for Hallström.  Based on the novel by Richard C. Morais, the film tells the story of The Kadam family, Indian refugees who arrive in a picturesque village in the south of France to open a restaurant. The patriarch, known as Papa (Om Puri), is a thrifty businessman, and his son Hassan (Manish Dayal) is a cook with a one of a kind genius. All would seem ideal for the success of their culinary venture, except that the only location available is just one hundred feet away from a popular, Michelin-rated, upper crust French restaurant run by the fiercely competitive Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren).

The first half of the picture is pretty much what you would expect.  What keeps The Hundred-Foot Journey from dissolving into tedious, patronizing, cinematic treacle is that the story is not entirely predictable. That is to say, the narrative isn’t entirely predictable; it certainly is emotionally predictable as films of this nature almost always are. This is, after all, a Disney film directed by Hallström and produced by Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey. One should not go in expecting a deep exploration of the very real ethnic tensions that trouble contemporary France. The two kinds of audiences who will go to this movie—folks hoping for an uplifting romantic fantasy, and people like me who see pretty much everything—know what they’re in for when they go to a picture like this. The picture will satisfy the desires of the first demographic and slightly exceed the expectations of the second.

It’s always a pleasure to watch old pros like Puri and Mirren, even though they could sleepwalk through roles like Papa and Madame Mallory. The younger stars, Dayal and Charlotte Le Bon, who plays Marguerite, a young sous-chef in Madame Mallory’s restaurant, are equally engaging. Hallström and screenwriter Steven Knight infer, rather than draw out, their characters’ emotional developments. This tactic keeps the scenes between Puri and Mirren from becoming cloying but it leaves Dayal’s and Le Bon’s relationship feeling underdeveloped. Still, the film is visually sumptuous: its locations, its cast, and its food are beautiful. Hallström and cinematographer Linus Sandgren spend less time ogling and fetishizing the dishes their characters prepare than other directors of culinary films. As with Chocolat, the picture’s romantic fantasy is more important than the specifics of its cuisine. If Hallström is a peddler of food porn, it’s soft-core porn that comes off as classy—albeit in an entirely artificial way. Let’s call him a purveyor of “food erotica” whose latest offering is an engaging, mildly satisfying, but rather forgettable diversion.