January, and the roasting pans are cold now. The good silverware has returned to velvet-lined boxes, and the heirloom china has been carefully stacked away on shelves. Thick plastic freezer bags hold hunks of ham and turkey in cryogenic suspension until the day, weeks from now, when they will be reanimated in casseroles or soups.
The six-week holiday feasting frenzy is over; time to get up from the table, buckle your belt and resolve to get on with 2006. Isn’t that always what they say once the sparkly ball has dropped? January is all about newfound asceticism, bracing cold to put the bones in our back. Farewell to brie and bread pudding! Think gaunt, not gravy.
That mindset of repentant deprivation is shared by Hollywood as well. For weeks, the multiplexes have been filled with all manner of enticing fare, what with wizards and lions and gorillas tromping about. But with the calendar’s change, the quality and breadth of offerings withers faster than that poinsettia you brought home from church. Hollywood is like a tired party host giving us the bum’s rush before the strains of “Auld Lang Syne” have faded.
Well, excuse me if I want to party a bit longer.
Movie theaters and cooking mags might be more geared toward famine than feast right now, but there’s nothing that says we have to share this winter of their discontent. Get to a movie rental shop or punch up your Netflix queue with these outstanding movies that celebrate all the best of life – and food!
When you ask foodie film fans to name a movie that combines both loves, “Babette’s Feast” (1987) is almost always the first to be mentioned. It couldn’t be more appropriate for this time of year, set as it is in a bleak and cold Danish village where the land and the sky seem indistinguishably gray.
To this village comes Babette (Stéphane Audran), a Frenchwoman seeking refuge from a mysterious past. Although she is Catholic and a foreigner, she is taken in by two sisters who are the spiritual leaders of this pious Protestant community. Babette works for them as a maid and cook, and their dependence on her grows. But when Babette’s fortunes take a dramatic turn, she begins pondering a return to France. Before she does, however, she persuades the reluctant sisters to allow her to prepare a magnificent feast to thank the village for all it has given her. What follows is a magical culinary experience that transforms everyone at the table, no matter how determined they are to resist.
In the film “Big Night” (1996), there’s Primo (Tony Shalhoub). Second, there’s Secondo (Stanley Tucci). Third, and finally, there’s Louis Prima. Only Louis Prima isn’t there. That’s the bittersweet reality that hits two brothers depending on one last, extravagant feast to save their restaurant.
Primo, the chef, is a shy but stubborn perfectionist who refuses to deviate from the authentic recipes he brought from Italy. But Secondo, the would-be entrepreneur, sees the spaghetti-and-meatballs place across the street doing gangbuster business and wants a piece of the action.
A promise of help comes from an unlikely source: Pascal (Ian Holm), their successful competitor, who offers to get famous singer Louis Prima to come to the brothers’ place for dinner, press in tow. Determined to win the entertainer’s endorsement, the boys throw all they can into one big night. But as the clock ticks on, they realize that Prima isn’t going to show. Undaunted by their misfortune, they decide to hold the party anyway … and soon the feast takes on a life of its own.
Love. Food. Sex. The perfect bowl of noodles. It’s all inextricably linked in “Tampopo” (1985), perhaps the greatest celebration of food in all its aspects ever put to film. It’s also highly sensual, erotic at times … and unquestionably hilarious. Like the highly successful “Amelie” of a few years back, “Tampopo” runs off in tangents, telling other people’s stories before gradually veering back to that of the heroine. But without that richness and depth of experience, the tale at the heart of the movie would seem less important.
Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto) is a hapless widow trying to run her late husband’s noodle shop. But business is poor, and her cooking is awful. Then one day a mysterious truck driver shows up and offers to turn her into a master ramen chef. What follows is a lighthearted send-up of all manner of classic films, from spaghetti westerns and gangster flicks to samurai epics and erotica. Along the way we meet an old woman with a fetish for food squeezing; a noodle-eating class that abandons all etiquette; a mother who shambles off her deathbed to cook dinner; and a group of discriminating vagrants who only pick the trash at four-star restaurants.
All three of these films offer a great post-holiday repast, and stories that get your heart warmed and your stomach rumbling. Make plans to have a bunch of friends over and follow a viewing with your own big night, whether it’s the chaotic fun of a communal kitchen or the conviviality of a long table at your favorite restaurant. Now there’s a resolution I can get behind.
And if you really want that “gotta diet” reinforcement? Rent “Super Size Me” and watch the pounds just melt away!
This article appears in Jan 1-31, 2006.