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| Emjay Anthony and Jon Favreau aren't selling cigars in Chef. |
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Chef. Written and directed by Jon
Favreau. At selected theaters.
While you've been busy
living your life, cable TV has reordered certain things in your world. The "weather"—which was
formerly just background noise, like the Dow Jones Industrial Average and scores
of teams you don't follow---is now 24-hour news.
"Sports" is merely a variety of content.
And "food", thanks to shows like Iron
Chef and Chopped and Cutthroat Kitchen, is now sports.
If you missed all that, don't worry:
47 year-old Jon Favreau (Swingers, Iron Man) also didn't get the memo. The
result is Chef, a surprisingly tasty amuse-bouche that is predicated on the
idea that cooking is actually an imaginative endeavor, its practitioners subject
to inspiration, creative doldrums, sublimating their sexuality through their
craft, etc. In short, he somehow believes chefs are artists, not gladiators in aprons.
Favreau plays Carl Casper, a
once-upon-a-time rising star on the LA restaurant scene. Once a cauldron of
creativity, he's lately fallen into a rut created by his own success, as his
boss (Dustin Hoffman, in a small role) doesn't want him deviate from the culinary
"hits" that made his reputation. He's just treading water, and even
that keeps him too busy for a meaningful relationship with the son (Emjay
Anthony) from his failed (but amicably ended) marriage to Inez (Sofía Vergara).
A scathing review from a smug blogger (Oliver Platt) sends Carl's precarious
life into a tailspin. "I just want to cook," he complains, as the
business of his business sucks all the pleasure from his craft. Finding the fun
again—and a shared life with his son—ultimately leads him to a grease-spattered
taco truck in Miami, where there's always room for a another decent Cuban
sandwich.
Favreau's script could easily have
gone another way. Personal redemption stories aren't rare in Hollywood, and they
usually involve some kind of mano y mano,
some sort pissing contest. If Chef
were a typical vehicle for Tom Cruise (who is actually four years older than
Favreau), it would have been more about flashy knife skills and the endearing
foibles that make "the Kid" hard to beat. Chef Cruise might have
ended up matched against his stuffy nemesis (say, Tom Hiddleston) on an episode
of Iron Chef, where the hero would fall
way behind, but then pull out the win with some bewildering stroke of culinary
genius. Cut to The Girl in the audience—lubed with adoration—and then the
closing shot of fist-pumping Cruise, immortalized in freeze-frame.
But Favreau's guy doesn't want to be
on Iron Chef, or be a reality TV
star. He just wants to cook. In Favreau's script, that's just what he does, trying to rebuild his self-esteem and his personal life one crafty sandwich at
a time. Like John Turturro's Fading
Gigolo, there's a maturity in this film's proportioning of story and
stakes. In both, there's a sense that heroism need not be manifested in
triumph, but in plugging away consistently at something you're good at.
True, Favreau had his career
breakthrough with Iron Man, a $200
million superhero opus. He's got more appeal working on the scale of Swingers and Chef, though. Here's to small plates.
©
2014 Nicholas Nicastro
