In the Bakery Window, Lollipops

Mema said Aunt Lucille’s life was one long dream of the movies with herself in all the best parts.
~ Crazy in Alabama
It is quite possible that movies are partly to blame for my passion for food. Although my early years in food service were far from glamorous, watching and remembering scenes that made food preparation and consumption look elegant and sexy made me enjoy it so much more. Suddenly I was watching for and noticing elements of the industry that I wanted to know more about. Soon I started reading books by Ruth Reichl and Jeffrey Steingarten and my ears would perk up at the name of a chef or an ingredient I had never before heard of or considered. And it just keeps getting worse, or better, depending on how you look at it I suppose. The more I learn, the more fascinated I am.

The film scenes that come to mind when I think of food may not be from the best movies, nor may they be the best food scenes out there. But they had me captivated enough to remember them. Here is a short list:


Amélie
I love that our protagonist gets thrills out of putting her hands in bags of grain and breaking the shell of crème brulée with a spoon. When Amélie bakes bread, I want to bake bread, too. When she grates cheese over her pasta, I am suddenly craving the same. The characters in the café drink beautiful Kir Royals, and the sound of the milk steamer has me missing my days learning how to make the perfect cappucino. I smile when I watch the way that Lucien handles each vegetable, and my heart aches for him when he is teased for it. When Mr. Bretodeau teaches his grandson how to find the oysters in the roasted chicken, I am sitting around the table at my parents' house after a holiday feast, picking at the leftovers.

City of Angels
Meg Ryan dies because of food in this one, so it's worth a mention. She and Nicolas Cage taught me how to enjoy the touch and smell of fresh fruits and vegetables when at a market, and I love trying to come up with descriptions of the food that I eat, as the movie briefly described the sensations of eating a fresh pear or slurping down an oyster, tasting the salty sea. I think of this movie every time I chop fruit and mix the pieces together with my hands, letting the juice from the orange slices drip down to my elbows.

Woman on top
I first understood how sexy food preparation could be while watching the Brazilian Isabella (Penélope Cruz) in her restaurant, her cooking class, and then hosting her television show, Passion Food. The men in the film all stare in awe at her, jaws dropped, as she describes the simplist tricks for cutting chilis or squeezing coconut juice. I admit I had a similar reaction, and have been fascinated with Latin cooking since. No other part that Ms. Cruz has ever played comes to memory, but Isabella will always be one of my favorite women in the kitchen.

Spanglish
The reviews were average at best, the box office earnings were far from impressive, and I rarely find anybody who saw this movie or remembered anything particularly positive about it. Still, I count it in my lists of favorite movies (much to my husband's confusion), and this is largely because of the food. I didn't sit down to watch a great movie, (I think it was just on HBO one day and I ended up watching it from halfway in) but less than twenty minutes later I was captivated. There was something so wonderfully familiar about Adam Sandler's character: the way he felt about his review and his restaurant, and the way that food comforted him when everything around him was falling apart. He doesn't reach for a bag of greasy salty snack food, nor does he rely on a pint of Ben & Jerry's; for Chef John Clasky, comfort food is a plate of gooey French cheeses and a bottle of red wine consumed on the floor of the restaurant's walk-in refrigerator. Or, in what I consider to be one of the top food scenes ever, the creation of the perfect sandwich in the middle of the night. If you have seen the movie, then you remember what is referred to as the Spanglish sandwich. I discovered later that the glorious Chef Thomas Keller was tapped to consult for this movie and in particular that scene, and it all made complete sense to me. The most romantic part in the movie is the evening that John and Flo spend in his restaurant, cooking, eating, and talking, building sexual tension (that never gets released) with each bite.

Chocolat
This is a story of a beautiful and wise woman who descends upon a small town and introduces all the sad people therein to the magical effect that food can have on them, making their lives more fulfilling, exotic, and lustful. Vianne does this with chocolate, an apron, and a twinkle in her eye. I related to Armande's wish to have her last moments in life be filled with a Bacchanalian feast, surrounded by those she loved the most. I loved every page of the book and every minute of the movie, and I desparately sought chocolate (and more) when I left the theater.

Ratatouille
And speaking of Thomas Keller... Not really a fan of animated films, I was reluctant to see this one. But I could only hear "Jayne, you have to see this movie!" so many times before finally giving in. So, one night, Chez and I stayed in and ordered the silly movie about the rat who wanted to be a chef on pay-per-view. It had a lot going for it right off the bat with Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm, Brian Dennehy, Brad Garrett, Will Arnett, Janeane Garofalo and Peter O'Toole (as the most feared restaurant critic in Paris) supplying the voices, but watching Remy lovingly pair found ingredients and then feeling the disappointment when his fellow rats just didn't get it, had me completely smitten. His euphoria while running around the restaurant kitchen, with the spices flying and the music souring, was contagious through the screen. I could not keep the smile off of my face; I was giggling through the entire movie. When Remy couldn't eat the breakfast he had painstakingly prepared, my heart went out to him. Moment after moment he was just a misunderstood foodie who wanted nothing more than to cook food and watch people enjoy his creations. I loved that little rat.
(Pixar Studios also sought the expertise of Chef Keller to bring authenticity to the animated kitchen and the creations coming out of it.)

Waitress
With each new turn of the story, our protagonist imagines a new pie in her head, and we get to watch the mixing and pouring of the ingredients into the crust. She never seems to understand the effect that her pies have on the people around her, but we catch glimses throughout the film and we understand what Doctor Pomatter falls in love with. No matter what sadness creeps into her life, Jenna can always escape to her kitchen. The intimacy between her and the delicious Nathan Fillion when she teaches him how to bake her specialty becomes even more charming when she sings the song that her mother sang to her. And you just know that when she walks off into the countryside with her little girl in the end, they too will sing together about baking a pie with a heart in the middle.