What you expect from a film about a fancy high-end restaurant is a certain amount of heat: the roiling intensity of staff pushed to their absolute limits in the pursuit of gastronomic perfection. But this 1960s-set Peruvian drama instead maintains a gentle simmer, sedate and elegant. Perhaps it's too elegant given the circumstances of its chef-proprietor, a high-society trophy wife with no catering experience who makes a high-stakes gamble on opening a successful restaurant.
A glacial beauty's gamble
Bárbara Mori is Norma, a glacial beauty who cultivates a kind of Jackie Onassis chic: huge sunglasses, massive blow-dry, makeup thickly applied like armour. One night, Norma's husband humiliatingly leaves her for a beauty queen. You'd be sympathetic if Norma wasn't so foul to the staff, lashing out at housekeeper Rosa (Hermelinda Luján) and chauffeur Oscar (Cesar Ballumbrosio).
It's Oscar (who is a bit in love with Norma) who suggests she opens a restaurant in the house to pay the mortgage. Norma's father was the French ambassador to Peru, and she has picked up his passion for gastronomy. Although the script is a bit inconsistent on this, since Oscar also says he's never seen her so much as light the oven.
Slow burn in the kitchen
The restaurant has four months to succeed before the bank repossesses the house. And still, there's no sense of Norma, or the film, breaking into a sweat. She hires a Japanese Peruvian sous-chef in the kitchen; Oscar is front of house. But the early reviews are tepid, describing the French cuisine as a bit trad, and the restaurant is half empty.
There are lessons to come about how teamwork makes the dream work, and embracing Peru's cultural diversity. The trouble is that, before that, Norma is such an insufferable snob; it's a bit too long to hold your nose and stick with her. Mistura is in UK and Irish cinemas from 16 October.
