Things That Go Pop!

A gourmet rat takes over a Parisian kitchen in Ratatouille, one of a number of films that make a meal of the pleasures of food. (Disney Enterprises/Pixar Animation Studios/Associated Press)

Food, glorious food
A menu of movies to tantalize your taste buds

By Martin Morrow, CBC News

In the new movie Julie & Julia, which opens Friday, Meryl Streep plays the late Julia Child, one of the first modern, media-smart chefs to bring cooking to television audiences. Since Child first raised her spatula before a camera in the 1960s, food programming has become so wildly popular that entire cable networks are now devoted to it. Feature films, however, have been slow to get on the foodie bandwagon. I’m not sure why, given that TV has shown us the breathtaking dramatic potential in preparing a soufflé or a torte, as well as revealing the array of colourful personalities – from anal WASPs (Martha Stewart) to combustible Brits (Gordon Ramsay) – who lurk behind the cooking range.

However, there is a select batch of delectable movies dealing with food and cooks, to which Julie & Julia promises to be a welcome addition. Then there are the pictures that have dealt tangentially, but strikingly, with gastronomic themes. The following cinematic menu includes a survey of both.

Compliments to the chef

There’s nothing like watching a gifted cook whip up a lavish banquet – especially when the stakes are high. In Big Night (1996), Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci’s ode to Italian edibles and enterprise, temperamental chef Primo (Tony Shalhoub of TV’s Monk) must prepare a dazzling dinner to save his and his brother’s failing New Jersey restaurant:

A fabulous meal can not only win patrons, but also sway the self-righteous. In the 1988 foreign-film Oscar winner Babette’s Feast, the French domestic of the title (Stéphane Audran) creates a sumptuous repast that melts the resolve of a puritanical Danish community like so much clarified butter.

Mouth-watering visuals are the key to a great food film — something Brad Bird realized when he set about crafting his 2007 cartoon hit Ratatouille, which proves that even animated chow can stimulate the salivary glands. Here, the wizards of Pixar discuss how they worked their culinary magic:

But you don’t have to be a Cordon Bleu grad to prepare food with finesse. Check out Barbara Stanwyck learning the techinique of the pancake flip in Christmas in Connecticut (1940), or Jack Lemmon blithely straining spaghetti with a tennis racquet in The Apartment (1960).

Some Asian spice

Asian filmmakers have given us some of the best food flicks. One of the all-time greats is Japanese director Juzo Itami’s 1985 comedy Tampopo, which is at once a spoof western and an insightful commentary on the role of food and eating in society. Typical is this witty scene in which a noodle master teaches his disciple the fine art of consuming a bowl of ramen:

Ang Lee’s lovely family comedy Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) not only has a cook as its central character, but also pays homage to the intricacies of Chinese cuisine. Sihung Lung stars as Chu, an aging Taiwanese chef who ritualistically prepares an amazing Sunday dinner for his three nubile daughters. The opening montage in Chu’s kitchen is a succulent symphony.

Wong Kar-wai’s films show a similar appreciation for the arousing qualities of food. In the Mood for Love, his exquisite 2000 drama about repressed romance in 1960s Hong Kong, makes erotic use of a noodle canteen, dangled provocatively by a sexy Maggie Cheung. It also features a tribute to traditional Western meat-and-potatoes fare. The scene where Cheung and Tony Leung dine on steak at the legendary Goldfinch Restaurant gives mustard a sensuality we never knew it possessed.

Hungry for love

Film has often equated sex and food. One of the tamer scenes in Adrian Lyne’s infamous S&M flick 9½ Weeks (1986) has Mickey Rourke feeding Kim Basinger everything from strawberries to jalapenos. Is this what they mean by food porn?

Two decades earlier, Tony Richardson’s rollicking movie of the picaresque novel Tom Jones (1963) found Albert Finney and Joyce Redman gamely using food as foreplay:

Chocoholics

The seductive power of the cacao bean was celebrated in Chocolat (2000). Lasse Hallstrom’s enjoyably gooey confection concerns a lovely young chocolatier (Juliette Binoche) and her little daughter, who open shop in a French village and slowly charm its grumpy citizens with irresistible bonbons:

Chocolat co-star Johnny Depp went on to woo child palates as candy magnate Willy Wonka in Tim Burton’s 2005 version of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – the ultimate fairy tale for those with a sweet tooth.

The traditional preparation of hot cocoa becomes a simile for boiling passion in the 1992 Mexican romance Like Water for Chocolate. Its heroine, kitchen sorceress Tita (Lumi Cavazos), takes cooking to the magic-realist level — at one point, she serves up an aphrodisiac dish of quail that turns her sister into a human torch:

Do you want fries with that?

Cafés, diners and their homey victuals are fondly portrayed in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), Diner (1982) and Fried Green Tomatoes (1991). The last includes a down-home food fight when Mary-Louise Parker tries to teach Mary Stuart Masterson how to make that eponymous Southern delicacy:

Fast food, meanwhile, is frequently a backdrop in coming-of-age movies. The kids in George Lucas’s American Graffiti (1973) hung out at Mel’s Drive-In with its roller-skating carhops. Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates and Jennifer Jason Leigh worked the fast-food grind in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), in which Sean Penn’s insouciant surfer dude also had a pizza delivered to class. Meanwhile, a young Julia Roberts slung pepperoni in the 1988 rom-com Mystic Pizza.

Spike Lee, however, gets the prize for the most powerful use of pizza on film. In Do the Right Thing (1989), an Italian ’za joint in a black Brooklyn neighbourhood goes from a symbol of co-existence to a catalyst for violent discord in the course of one sweltering-hot summer’s day.

Institutional fare

Countless film scenes have been set in prison mess halls and school cafeterias. The usual emphasis is on how bad the food is (think of a scoop of mashed potatoes landing splat on a tin tray). In Oliver!, the 1968 musical based on Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, the appalling workhouse gruel inspires flights of digestive fantasy:

From Victorian deprivation to postwar over-abundance: the 1978 frat comedy Animal House features an infamous scene in which John Belushi’s boorish Bluto hoovers up a bountiful college buffet, and tops it off with an indelible impersonation of a popped zit.

Food is a common ingredient in gangster movies, usually mixed with violence — think of Michael Corleone blowing away a couple of enemies over their linguine in The Godfather. In Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas, however, one of the few peaceful moments is a communal prison meal cooked up by elite Mafia convicts:

Keep your fork, there’s pie

No survey of food films can ignore the fact that one of the early weapons in the film comedian’s arsenal was a well-thrown cream pie. Famed pastry marksmen included Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges:

For a more sophisticated use of dessert, there’s the indie 2007 comedy Waitress by the late Adrienne Shelly. Keri Russell stars as the title character, an abused wife who uses pie-making as a means of self-expression and, eventually, a way out of her unhappy life.

Unappetizers

Finally, for those with cast-iron stomachs, there’s the sub-genre of anti-food films. They include Peter Greenaway’s disturbing The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) — where haute cuisine meets cannibalism — and Marco Ferreri’s queasy satire La Grande Bouffe (1973) — in which four jaded gourmands make a pact to eat themselves to death.

For an unappetizing comedy with a lighter touch, try Mike Leigh’s Life Is Sweet (1990). It has Jim Broadbent as an industrial chef turned fast-food vendor and Jane Horrocks as his surly, bulimic daughter, who gets her boyfriend (David Thewlis) to lick sandwich spread off her breasts. It also features one of the best bad restaurants ever — a tacky, Edith Piaf-themed French bistro called The Regret Rien. Deliciously ludicrous!

Do you have a favourite food-themed movie? Leave your suggestions below.

Julie & Julia opens Friday, Aug. 7.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.

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