Georgian Peach

Does this sound familiar? In Nana Djordjadze’s A Chef in Love, an uncompromising creator of high cuisine stubbornly opposes the philistines and fools who threaten his perfectionism, transforming his kitchen into a kind of metaphoric battleground.

This is, of course, the premise of last year’s independent hit Big Night, with its sly commentary on the war between art and commerce, and (in a slightly different context) the basis of the Chinese master chef’s misunderstanding of his daughters in Eat Drink Man Woman.

I’m not suggesting that Djordjadze, an exponent of exciting cinematic doings in the Georgian republic, has pilfered his ingredients–just that the figure of the passionate chef probably has more uses in the symbolic world than previously thought.

Here the fellow swinging the spatula is a Frenchman named Pascal Ichac (Pierre Richard), a bon vivant, amateur opera singer and bold adventurer who comes to ground in the early 1920s in Tbilisi, Georgia–largely because on a train journey, he’s fallen in love with an exotic Georgian princess called Cecilia Abachidze (Nino Kirtadze). Fittingly, her appetites are as large as his own. Blessed with a gourmet’s finesse, a bloodhound’s unerring sense of smell and a sybarite’s excess, Pascal inadvertently saves the president of the republic from a revolutionist’s bomb, founds an expatriate temple of great French cooking called the Eldorado and, as far as we can tell, plans to live happily ever after amid the artistic pleasures of the table.

Except for the marauding Bolsheviks, of course. Rather crude diners, this bunch, and no fans of red-headed princesses.

Djordjadze and screenwriter Irakli Kvirikadze tell their tale in flashbacks–historical scenes imagined by a Paris art curator called Anton (Jean-Yves Gautier) as he reads Pascal’s revealing memoirs, which have been uncovered by the great chef’s niece Marcelle (Micheline Presle). There are many beautiful and telling moments here–Pascal joyfully stomping grapes, the Leninists holding him prisoner in the attic of his own restaurant, the forced “Red wedding” of Cecilia and a violent comrade (Teimour Kahmhadze) who’s long lusted after her. Best of all: An hour after Pascal slyly poisons a Bolshevik lunch, the Reds’ entire convoy of cars screeches to a halt in the gorgeous countryside, with hilarious results.

There’s also a matchless late moment in this romantic tragicomedy in which we find the man of passion, convinced that great food will outlast any political movement, talking fondly to his tomato plants on the roof of the prison/restaurant he won’t abandon.

Chef’s underlying messages have to do with the power of individual initiative over soul-deadening groupthink and the primacy of art over ideology. But these actors and moviemakers slip in the hook so subtly that we’re scarcely aware, most of the time, that we’re watching anything but an overheated, enduring romance between a man and a woman, beheld from afar by an astonished descendant.

Actually, we’re seeing again the essential conflicts of the twentieth century, exquisitely packaged with wit, intelligence and passion. Kolya was named Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Academy Awards. This Georgian gem would have been my choice.

–Gallo

A Chef in Love.
Screenplay by Irakli Kvirikadze. Directed by Nana Djordjadze. With Pierre Richard, Nino Kirtadze, Micheline Presle and Jean-Yves Gautier.