In the late 1980’s Daniele Mazet–Delpeuze was running a small Bed & Breakfast on her new truffle farm in Perigord in Northern France when out of the blue she got a call to tell her that someone in Paris wanted her to cook for him. On the recommendation on none other than Joel Robuchon, President Mitterand of France wanted her to be his private chef. This movie is loosely adapted on Daniele’s story, and even though some of the names have changed, the menus and recipes have remained the same,
Hortense (aka Daniele) appointment at the Elysee Palace is because the President is an old fashioned ‘foodie’ and he wants her to make him the ‘real food of France’. Whilst she has his total support she has to fight all the antagonism of the main kitchens a bastion of male preserve and where the rule of thumb has always been that Presidential food should be both rich and ornate. Hortense’s speciality on the other hand is ‘simple’ dishes …. although I’m not sure how plates of salmon stuffed in a cabbage and served with cream qualify as that.
The food is exquisite and obscenely mouth-watering and Hortense is delightfully played by the wonderful veteran French actress Catherine Frot, but in between meals the movie is as flat as a pancake (or should that be a crepe?). Seemed like a wasted opportunity of a great story of the Palace’s first female chef ever, but the skirmishes with her resentful colleagues never really panned out, and her stilted relationship with the miscast poor old actor playing the President with such frailty I was convinced he would be dead before desert. The story was framed at each end by the next unlikely post that Hortense took on when her stint in Rue St Honore was finished : as a chef, and the only female, on a Antarctic Base. She must have been one hell of a woman.
One for foodies …. BUT be more sensible than me and do eat first.
Available on Amazon/Itunes VOD
★★★★★
Labels: 2012, dramatized reallife, food & drink, French
