Second collaboration between French director, screenwriter and actor Slony Sow and French National Treasure, actor Gérard Depardieu after the multi-awarded 2011 short movie “Grenouille d'Hiver” (Winter Frog), “Umami” is co-presented with Alliance Française de Chicago as part of 2023 Francophonie festival – a recurring annual collaboration.
Umami is screening at Asian Pop-Up Cinema Sophia's Choice
Gabriel Carvin (Gérard Depardieu) is a multi-starred chef who has been dedicating all his life to build up his reputation, his fabulous restaurant Chateaux and his palmares of Michelin-like Stars. Stubborn, excessive, self-centred, he has also neglected his family in the process, and alienated the people around him. His eldest son Jean is a chef too, working in the family business, but he never had a chance to do anything out of his father's shadow and his self confidence has dropped to paralysing levels; his youngest son Nino is an idealist and environmentalist who loves travelling and practicing extreme sports – basically a spoiled privileged brat – and finally his wife Louise (Sandrine Bonnaire) is sleeping with a food critic without making any effort to disguise it. Gabriel's only friend is his oysters' supplier Rufus (Pierre Richard), a jolly farmer who shares with the chef a love for a chat in front of fresh oysters and a glass or two of cognac. Gabriel is aware of his alienation but keeping his empire running requires time and effort and all this ends up taking its toll on the chef's health.
One night, while drinking and tampering in the kitchen, he suffers a catastrophic stroke, and is saved in the nick of time by one of his employees. While recovering from a complex heart operation, the discomfort with his life and the disaffection that surround him start to reach alert levels. When in one of his evenings with friend Rufus he realizes that a flavor has been puzzling him all his life after tasting a bowl of ramen many years before, he decides to put everything on hold and go searching for that Japanese chef who had introduced him to the mouth-watering experience of umami. However, once in Japan, chef Morita (Kyozo Nagatsuka) who runs a modest ramen shop with his daughter, doesn't seem to be too happy or too bothered by the starred chef's flattering words, showing an approach to life and career very different from Gabriel's.
Umami is a Japanese word that designates one of the five basic tastes. It is rather new as it was coined in 1908 to describe a sort of “pleasant savory deliciousness” and finally recognized in the mid-eighties as a scientific term to describe the action of glutamates on our taste buds. Its relatively recent “canonization” explains the aura of mystery that still surrounds it and the fact that not everybody is able to pinpoint it. However, chefs are well aware of umami's properties and especially French ones as their heritage cuisine is rich in meat juices, broths, cheeses and shellfish; in one word, umami. This consideration makes the premises of chef Carvin's trip in search of the meaning of umami, rather flimsy, but as we see later in the film, the whole umami concept tries to evolve into a wider symbol of simple pleasure, family love and human connection.
The introduction to chef Carvin's environment and family at the beginning of the film is perceived as rather long, probably because these celebrity chefs' antics have been everywhere for decades now, and we have seen all these so many times that they struggle to keep the interest level up. However, when Depardieu finally lands in Japan, the film perks up slightly, due to the evergreen fish-out-of-water, culture-clash tropes, well-supported also by the actor's cartoonish physique and mumbling attitude. The contrast with the Japanese chef, played by Kyozo Nagatsuka, is pleasant and interesting as it shows an engaging comparison between a certain western eagerness to push skills to the max and become the best in everything, against the Japanese attitude of Morita who is still in his modest joint, making only one dish, but at its best.
Unfortunately, this is just a fleeting moment as the narration is disrupted by many underdeveloped subplots that jump back and forward between France and Japan. There is a depressed Japanese teenager who hides her antidepressant in a box, there is the frustrated son of the chef trying to emerge, there is a rather annoying spoiled kid skydiving and wasting his parents' money, there is a salaryman who has neglected his family, there is a pinch of revenge porn, a sprinkle of environmentalism, a good measure of a baffling freakshow, a clumsy attempt to be “up-to-date” in the form of a – frankly ridiculous – influencer. Too many ingredients for a film that basically tries to advocate simple pleasures. Many of the characters incarnate a mono-dimensional stereotype, like wooden marionettes; the neglected wife, the food critic, the grumpy chef, the suicidal teenager, the repressed son, the twat son, the happy farmer, the influencer (oh dear, the influencer!), and consequently they dangerously resemble caricatures. They move around, orchestrated by a script that includes many inexplicable occurrences and many too-easy coincidences. Sadly, the one thing that could save the film is the suspect, at the end, that it all could have been Gabriel's dream. However … is this a good thing?
“Umami” is polished like a commercial and sweet (pun not intended) like a bonbon; it is mildly entertaining if you like Depardieu and watching chefs cheffing around, but mildly irritating if you love Japan and umami.
