Food is a multisensory experience. There’s the immediacy of taste, but soon scent is intertwined. Then there’s sight, with fluffed microgreens or carefully rounded quenelles of butter. You hear the banging of pans, the sizzle of hot oil, or even that delicate, fated “mmm.” With such vivid internalized imagery, it shouldn’t be surprising that film and television directors have jumped at the opportunity to create food media, both in cooking and eating. These projects are beautified visual feasts, allowing a viewer to escape into the food they see. In that state of visual catharsis, it’s easy to forget that food is an object, a commodity, and not necessarily a being. There are stories behind food, whether it be the transactional customer-chef relationship or the entrepreneurial home cook. It’s these human narratives that provide our food meaning. Without humanity, our food media necessarily falls flat.
Maybe the most commonly known piece of food cinema is the 2014 film Chef, about the politics of the restaurant industry. Overlarge with montages of food preparation and predated hero arcs, the film is predictable but entertaining. The New York Times’ Stephen Holden called the film “shallow but enjoyable,” a descriptor that certainly feels apt. Still, the film’s surface-level comic nature hides a more complicated underbelly. Chef presupposes a mystical life for its lead, one so unrealistic that it diminishes the project’s value. Chef Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) is written as a resentful chef, who ultimately starts up his own business harnessing the simplicity of good eats. That willingness to subvert the restaurant structure and take up new creative ventures is largely imaginary, for the modern food industry will not allow for it. Many have commented on how personal Chef is to writer/director Favreau, who reflected his familial background and professional aspirations into the character of Carl. It’s easy to equate Favreau’s “step down” from big budgets to indie flicks to the movements of Favreau’s character, who abandons his restaurant for a meager food truck. But remember, Favreau is not a chef, but rather a customer. Favreau projects his dreams for what the food industry should be, not what it is, and thus strips his characters of any humanity. When Casper makes that fated Cuban sandwich, it feels predestined, almost fake. Chef proves just why poorly written food media can be so problematic — restaurants are a mercantile environment, and the buyers are trying to tell the sellers’ stories.
There are, on the other hand, several pieces of food media that portray the restaurant industry in its unvarnished glory. Boiling Point is the peak of that, a movie that is so steeped in the day-to-day of a professional cook that it never stops for air. The film allows for glimmers of the world beyond the kitchen, but centers itself in the utter brutalism of the present. Still, the film’s subjects are real and nuanced, graced with a sense of emotionality within the unflinching industry realism. Though maybe a bit more sappy and less immersive, FX’s The Bear similarly hinges on humanizing professional cooks. Though we mostly see their lives within the kitchen, the chefs of The Bear are allowed greater character and personal vigor. Food can represent these individuals’ grief, their loss, their frustrations. When Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) makes Marcus (Lionel Boyce) a gorgeous plate of sea bass, quietly lamenting over the loss of her business and livelihood, the pain is palpable. That sea bass oozes with meaning, far more than any shots from Chef.
This principle is also true outside of the restaurant. Home cooks are significant fodder for directors, who find beauty in the intricacies of their weeknight dinners. There’s also comedy in the life of a home cook. When a chef fails, it’s a professional tragedy; when a home cook fails, it’s a frenzied joke. No film captures this simple, delightful food comedy better than Julie & Julia. The film establishes a dual narrative, one around Julie (Amy Adams), a cook making her way through Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” and one around Child (Meryl Streep) herself. Julie’s narrative is fresh and compelling, using the signature Nora Ephron rom-com style to present a loveable home cook. On my 17th rewatch, I find myself focusing primarily on Julie’s story, mostly because the film seems to fail Child. In its comic structure, Child isn’t allowed any sincerity. It’s easy to make Child into a joke, with her iconic high muppety voice. What’s difficult is to make Child the real, empathic figure that she was. Thus, when Julie masters one of Child’s recipes, it feels like a victory. When Child masters a new technique, it feels subpar.
Over 10 years after the release of Julie & Julia, another Julia Child project came to fruition: HBO’s Julia. The show centers around Child’s movement to television, and the series of strategic moves she made to bring her series The French Chef into reality. Daniel Goldfarb, creator of the show, doesn’t skimp on the comedy. Still, Child is presented as a skillful entrepreneur. That’s partially due to the stellar work of actress Sarah Lancashire, who fills Child with a sense of hope and ambition. Child’s success wasn’t the luck of a bumbling fool. No, she was attentive, exacting, putting in the elbow grease to achieve her fortune. Thus, when Child crafts a perfect soufflé or opens up her bubbling coq au vin, the release is imminent. She is real, three-dimensional, and thus her food is afforded the same value. This is fundamentally different from Julie & Julia. The cuisine may be the same, but the effect differs, all due to the strength of narrative.
If the mere presence of food were cinematic enough for mass appeal, we would likely all flock to the Food Network. That’s not a dig at my beloved Ina Garten, but rather a message on how to make good food media. It isn’t the food that makes the narrative, but the cook behind it. When the human stories are faulty, stereotyped into obscurity or flagrantly untrue, the food isn’t as valuable. Food is as much an object as it is a symbol, and it can mean so much. Directors must allow it to, building out a world for the makers and creators of these delicacies. When they do, the results are oh so delicious.
