SUNDAY - Food the Common Tongue: Loves, Rages, and Delights of Gastro-Cinema
Programmed by: Ursula Rigberg Wagner
Despite its centrality to human existence, it is relatively rare to find movies that truly center on food. Perhaps this is because culinary experience is sensorial in a way that does not easily translate to film. The challenge for filmmakers, then, is to do more than recreate food aromas, textures, and flavors in our imaginations. The very best culinary movies go deeper and give us the emotional experience of cooking and eating. They also plunge us into the cultures that have given rise to these foods, and the communities they nurture.
In movies, as in life, food should provide more than sustenance. It communicates feelings characters cannot express in words, and it awakens emotions others did not know they possessed. Some onscreen chefs sublimate their secret desires into their dishes, while others cook to make bold public statements.
The titles in this series represent a diverse array of international filmmakers, and they span as many moods as they do cuisines. We begin, perversely, with the power of haute cuisine to repulse – to represent greed, punishment, and eventually vengeance (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover). We then travel to Japan (Tampopo), India (The Lunchbox), France by way of Denmark (Babette’s Feast), Russia by way of Italy (I Am Love), and Italy by way of both Germany (Mostly Martha) and New Jersey (Big Night). Along the way, we stop here in Chicago for some much-needed Soul Food. And for dessert, we have every kind of American pie (Waitress).
7:00PM Sunday, April 10th
Tampopo (1985)
Juzo Itami · 114m · DCP
A young Ken Watanabe plays a trucker who helps Tampopo, a down-on-her-luck ramen shop proprietress, on her way to noodle mastery in this rollicking culinary ride that eschews plot and genre alike. Perhaps Tampopo’s biggest through-line is instead the endless visual feast that threads together its episodic sketches spanning comedy, gustatory erotica, and playful meditations on human nature—a mix Itami never fails to bring to a satisfying sensory boil.
7:00PM Sunday, April 17th
I Am Love (2009)
Luca Guadagnino · 120m · 35mm
Tilda Swinton and Luca Guadagnino wrote this film over the course of 11 years, and their attempt to revive classical melodrama results in a love story that is tangled, yet simple. At its center is Emma (Swinton), the Russian wife of an Italian aristocrat. Inspired by her daughter’s coming out, she opts to follow her own heart as well: to be with her son’s best friend. It's a homey bowl of Russian soup that triggers the unraveling of this family empire.
7:00PM Sunday, April 24th
The Lunchbox (2013)
Ritesh Batra · 104m · 35mm
This quiet drama broke out of Bollywood in 2013, defying expectations as Indian and non-Indian audiences worldwide embraced its thoughtful, grown-up approach to romance. Ila (Nimrat Kaur) attempts to fix her marriage by stuffing love letters and home-cooked meals into lunchboxes for her husband. By mistake, they are delivered to a stranger (Irrfan Khan of Life of Pi and Slumdog Millionaire), and a correspondence nourishing to both body and soul begins.
7:00PM Sunday, May 1st
Babette's Feast (1987)
Gabriel Axel · 102m · Digital
Babette, a mysterious Parisian, washes up on the shores of a remote Danish village and offers to keep house for its two elderly matriarchs in exchange for shelter. Her classical French cooking skills threaten to break through their deep repression and send them into a state of ecstasy. Based on a short story by Isak Dinesen, this film epitomizes food’s power to give us religious experience and to strip away the confines of religion entirely.
4:30PM Saturday, May 7th
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
Peter Greenaway · 124m · 35mm
After a gangster (Michael Gambon) takes over Le Hollandais restaurant, he holds court each night, tormenting the staff and beating his wife (Helen Mirren). Sick of the abuse, she enters a graphic affair with a bookish patron. The lovers, however, are doomed from the start, and revenge becomes a dish best not served at all. Seen as an allegory for the brutality of the Thatcher era, the film’s striking visuals mimic paintings from the Dutch Golden Age.
Had to change screening date due to print shipment issue (originally 4/3/22)
7:00PM Sunday, May 8th
Mostly Martha (2001)
Sandra Nettelbeck · 109m · 35mm
German writer-director Sandra Nettelbeck sets her rom-com in the restaurant world, where chef Martha is harshly judged for running her kitchen with the same iron fist as a typical male chef. When tragedy lands her with custody of a niece too traumatized to even eat, Martha’s control begins to slip. A free-wheeling Italian sous-chef hired to help her only frustrates her more! Never has a bowl of spaghetti been more needed to warm bellies and hearts.
7:00PM Sunday, May 15th
Big Night (1996)
Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci · 107m · 35mm
Anthony Bourdain once called this wistful comedy “the best restaurant movie ever.” Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci play Primo and Secondo, emigrants from Calabria to the Jersey Shore. To save their authentic but struggling restaurant, they must cook the feast of their lives, whose pièce de résistance is the grand timpano. Tucci co-wrote the script and co-directed a cast that includes Minnie Driver, Ian Holm, Allison Janney, and Isabella Rossellini.
7:00PM Sunday, May 22nd
Soul Food (1997)
George Tillman Jr. · 115m · 35mm
Shot in Chicago, this story of a Black family unfolds over weekly Sunday dinners and is told through the eyes of 11-year-old Ahmad. The writer-director was inspired by his own family, especially his Big Mama. Her feasts of fried chicken, catfish, mac and cheese, cornbread, and black-eyed peas are lovingly recreated here and spiced with plenty of family drama. Babyface produced the film, and Vivica A. Fox, Vanessa Williams, and Nia Long play Ahmad’s mom and aunts.
7:00PM Sunday, May 29th
Waitress (2007)
Adrienne Shelly · 104m · Digital
This dark comedy stars Keri Russell as a small-town waitress, unhappily pregnant by her abusive husband (Jeremy Sisto) but in love with her obstetrician (Nathan Fillion). An ingenious baker, she channels her emotions into pies, like the I Hate My Husband Pie, Pregnant Miserable Self-Pitying Loser Pie, and Lonely Chicago Pie. Waitress was the only feature film by the late Adrienne Shelly, who also wrote, acted in, and co-designed sets and costumes for it.
