The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)

'The Hundred-Foot Journey' was a little like 'Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' for me - I had quite low expectations as I thought it was going to be an "old lady movie". Thankfully, I was proven wrong and instead was treated to a nice little film about following your dreams.The premise is simple - an Indian family move to London, get sick of the cold/rain (who wouldn't!) and travel to continental Europe to find a new place to settle and start a restaurant. This place happens to be a picturesque little village in Southern France - however, their new restaurant happens to be next to a Michelin-rated French restaurant, and a rivalry ensues.The performances from Puri as the Dad and Mirren as the French restaurant owner are great and quite nuanced, with Hassan (Daval) and Marguerite (the huge-eyed Le Bon) playing the young love interests/competing chefs. It's great to see how their friendship evolves as Hassan goes on his food journey. Some parts of this feel like a cooking show, but not enough to put you off. It has funny moments, touching moments and a nice ending - plenty of messages about openness and accepting other cultures, and generally giving something/someone a chance.

Lovely film, like sitting around a warm fire. So many topics covered in this interesting film, about cooking and why many of us are so passionate about it! Flavours and where they take us, when we taste them, used as a vehicle to enhance the story line of this enjoyable film. Family, Racism, love, both young and older, patriotism, competitiveness, by seeing the other person's point of view and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, opening your mind up to new things or ways of doing things and new experiences. Many times a mixture of different ways of doing something, improve the end result. What drives us, realizing, at the end of the day, what is truly important. Kindness, family and friends support. Allowing yourself to believe that people's intentions are good. Wonderful acting performances by the 4 main characters, whilst set in a dream location.

This movie is the gem of all spices. Sweet, sour, spicy and bitter, i thas everything and yet it blends it so well, stirs it so good, creating flavor out of thin air, encasing wisdom where none may dwell. The scenes are beautifully lit, the landscape is gorgeously depicted into a Turkish delight for your eyes, you get a sense of art and yet its moving and thrilling. The director thought to follow a different line than the one usually depicted as "generic" and obtained something so valuable yet uniquely so, appetizing. You can literally taste this movie, each moment and sip it as if you'd enjoy a sparkling wine along side a full course meal. The protagonist is your ideal person, unchained by arrogance yet bound by desire and hope, he is able to forge his path in the midst of strife yet unyielding and committed even in peril and adversity. The two parents are an idiom of experiences and memories, bringing together the generation and cultural gap of two different eras. Their families aren't just there for support and to offer doubt or confidence, but they act, they live and breath as if they were real. The whole village-town scene, the market, coffee shops, town hall and so forth, is the proof of "union cuisine", merging two different styles and cultures into one, creating a new history and a new culture. A symbiosis with no equal, this is the true 3 star of this movie. I highly recommend it. Regards, Syrus G

Canadian Buddhist Richard Morais wrote the bestselling Swiss-based novel here shifted to a rural French setting (a wise geographical move, since it raises the relevance and familiarity markedly). Helen Mirren steals the show as starchy French snob Madame Mallory, who is nevertheless big enough to make a better person out of herself when small-town bigotry raises its ugly head. That bigotry is focused against an Indian family who have the temerity to establish a curry house just across the street (i.e. 100 feet away) from a long-established, high-class and extremely traditional French restaurant. Escalating conflict follows, though this eventually transmogrifies into an effort against the common "enemy" of the Michelin awarders of stars (one more of which Mallory's restaurant would greatly desire to possess).On the Indian side, great parts are played by an excellent Om Puri as the patriarch sparring with Mallory's matriarch (no prizes for guessing where that leads proximately, and then ultimately; if in the most delightful of ways, it must be said). Manish Dayal plays "Papa's" gifted-chef son Hassan. There's also a creditable performance by Charlotte Le Bon as Marguerite, the love interest for Hassan in a mini "Romeo and Juliet" setup.It's all well-acted, pretty to look at, sporadically funny, well thought-through and reasonably done as a story, though mostly predictable enough. It's a huge pleasure to watch, nonetheless. There are points to be made about multicultural France, though the film is too gentle, or plays it a bit too safe, to hammer these home as it might. But that certainly does not mean they are absent altogether.What we do have, however - in abundance, thanks to Lasse Hallstrom's direction, Steven Knight's screenplay, Linus Sandgren's cinematography and even A.R. Rahman's music - is a homage to great world cuisines and their cultural connotations and associations and meaning. We obtain Proust-like reminders of how foods and their aromas bring back memories good and bad, and in general how very emotional food and its preparation can be. As "Bakeoff" viewers can be all-too aware, the very act of eating can be (and here is) seen as a kind of aggressive one, just as well as it may be pseudo-sexual and above all an act that satisfies needs basic and obvious, and less basic and obvious. People reconcile over a meal, but it may also provoke anger or competitiveness, jealousy or disappointment (or even illness). Likewise, preparation can be a heady mix of the artistic and the scientific, the erotic and the violent. Ingredients (at times as precious as gold) are chopped and thrashed, but also creamed and blended. Flavours are coaxed and teased out, and every effort is made to achieve innovation, apparent spontaneity and creative sparkle by way of extreme discipline and control.All of these aspects are writ large in the film, to the point where an attentive viewer can actually tick off just how many different ones have been brought to the attention. It's quite fun to do this, and I actually recommend it for those keen to give this piece its due recognition as a very nice piece of point-making art.