Thursday, August 06, 2009

Why Food Movies?

I love food movies.

With the upcoming release of Julie & Julia, I can't help but think about my favorite culinary flicks.

My three favorite food movies...Babette's Feast, Ratatoille, & Chocolat.

All interestingly enough have a strange common theme of French food and spirituality...

Chef refugee from Paris has a chance to lavish extraordinarily decadent French to the simplistic, pious community.

French rat chooses fine dining and culinary skills over low quality scraps, and in the process redeems the art of French cooking and prepares a meal that effects not only the taste buds, but the heart of one of the most critical people in all of Paris.

Drifter and her daughter journey across France were they open a chocolaterie in a strictly controlled religious community during lent, where the woman uses the power of decadent treats to mystical influence the lives of the people in the town, and to challenge their perceptions on faith.

It's interesting, but as I see it, food films usually deal with certain themes that make me enjoy food films.

Why Food Films?
  • Food is an equalizer, because we all eat food, it brings people together that might not normally come together.
  • Food brings pleasure not just to the consumer of the food, but the preparation and giving nature of food also is a powerful experience
  • Food is mysterious, you see it's presentation and taste it, but the best food has a mysterious quality that cannot be perfectly decomposed but deals with the unknown details of it's preparation.

3 comments:

Movies with Abe said...

What about Big Night? That's my favorite food movie.

sartre said...

I was going to praise Big Night too. Another fine foodie movie is Eat, Drink, Man, Woman.

Sue said...

Big Night is awesome