The Storyline

The storyline of this great film, directed by Scott Hicks, describes how a master chef, Kate, goes to live her life like she runs the kitchen at the very upscale 22 Bleecker Restaurant in Manhattan. She does this in a fashion that both captivates an intimidates everyone around her. With immaculate precision, she fights through all the hectic situations, meal coordination, and preparation of cooking to perfection. F

Food and Themes

The main role that food plays in this movie is that it is a sign of identity, to show someones true skills and almost their design or thoughts from what they cook. With the themes shown here, foodways is expressed through how Kate shows her French culture, as she cooks and prepares many foods that are associated with it such as chocolate mousse, crème brûlée, fruit tartlets, and many others. In this movie, food is shown as a material and symbolic through the food she cooks and the restaurant at which she works. Kate shows her high quality taste and touch with the amount of time, effort, resources, and cooking utensils she uses. Taste is shown as a skill as Kate provides her knowledge in the cooking industry as she can easily dictate how much of an ingredient is needed for certain recipes, similarly to how Julia Child and Martha Stewart as they were able to also show their extensive knowledge, as each time they made the recipe, they memorized it and understood more and more each time.

Opinion:

My informed opinion about the movie was that it was moving and showed and strong, independent woman lead role. It was able to show how a woman with some great knowledge acquired over the years can have some change to their world. Catherine Zeta-Jones (Kate) learns to let people in such as Aaron Eckhart (who plays Nick) and Abigail Breslin (who plays Zoe). They are able to show how she can adapt as she grows more fond of them throughout the entire movie as she starts to enjoy Nick’s company more when she found it as more of a bother at first and also showed her growing to Zoe, as she states she was “Doing everything wrong” in her perspective, however, Zoe contradicted by saying “Not everything” talking about Nick.

References

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0481141/