There’s a clear link between Le Chef and French cuisine: they’re both tasty. But while emblematic dishes like boeuf bourguignon, Alsatian foie gras, or Provencal bouillabaisse are famous for their finesse and richness, Daniel Cohen’s film is more like cinematic fast food: round, expected, and enhanced with some monosodium glutamate. While it’s not gourmet and far from the nutritive bliss of kale and chia, still one fatty bite can bring comfort and pleasure.
Jacky (Michaël Youn), is a scatterbrained failure, unable to hold a proper job, leaving his pregnant wife increasingly exasperated. The baby means responsibility and Jacky’s nowhere near owning adulthood with all it takes. But Béatrice (Raphaëlle Agogué) knows her partner’s not careless or egoistic, just a hopelessly passionate and talented daydreamer about food. However, a lack of certified professional training and an absence of proper networking skills makes Jacky an outsider to culinary circles, not treated seriously even by his own family members.
Films like Le Chef try to tell a good story of a passionate misfit who finds his luck by sheer coincidence and Cohen too resorts to such a structural solution. An unlikely combination of numerous situations puts Jacky into an apprenticeship in a three-star restaurant run by legendary chef Alexandre Lagarde (Jean Reno). The accidental intern soon discovers his guru is suffering a creative block, his inability to create new recipes threatening the restaurant’s Michelin rating and his future career. Here comes Jacky’s opportunity to shine. This naïve, honest amateur will try to share his genuine passion for cooking with an accomplished expert who’s lost the spark and fell in a rut, and soon realize his joy and attitude can be transformative and contagious.
Cohen’s film is not only like a screen version of a comforting, derivative fast food burger. With its ridiculous accumulation of charming views and lovely, but strangely familiar scenes, it’s also reminiscent of a postcard. It’s an honest, summer-appropriate proposition, frankly presenting itself as all about relaxing and smiling, leaving any controversy or true drama aside. Certain plots are presented as a series of loosely scattered skits, like chocolate chips sprinkled on top of a cake. The script is galloping ahead so fast, it completely neglects the issues of probability, jumping over subsequent logical holes, but it doesn’t unnerve, having an unintended comical effect instead. This typically French take on the comedy of errors often leans toward cabaret or slapstick, genres largely appreciated by the local audience. The love interest here shifts, too: from women to food. But actually, Le Chef is about neither. One can learn more about those two while enjoying a dinner with friends over a glass of good Medoc and a bite of tarte Tatin. Le Chef is more like Portuguese Vinho Verde – very light, making frivolity its main asset.
