The four lead actors in The Hundred-Foot Journey all deliver performances fine enough to warrant the price of your ticket, even if the material is a bit on the fluffy side. Puri’s Papa is a charming old conniver, and his scenes with Mirren crackle. Dayal and Le Bon also have great chemistry, but the sprightly young Canadian actress really gets to show her technique in a scene where Marguerite’s flirtation with Hassan suddenly turns to rivalry and poorly disguised resentment. An adorable gamine with an edge as steely as one of her kitchen knives, she’s a discovery worth following as meatier future roles inevitably come her way.
Hallström has no qualms about piling on the dog-eared cinematic clichés (yes, there’s even a cut from a romantic clinch to bursting fireworks), but they’re delivered with a deft touch, a tongue firmly in cheek and a knowing wink. The screenplay by Steven Knight, based on Richard C. Morais’ novel, isn’t stellar, but a fabulous Indian pop music soundtrack by A. R. Rahman and superb cinematography by Linus Sandgren compensate for the occasionally sodden, food-aphorism-laden dialogue. Two sequences – a very long tracking shot of the renovation of the old restaurant and a tense, hilarious scene of angry food-chopping in the two competing kitchens that gives new meaning to the term “cross-cut editing” – are so visually brilliant that they effectively deflated any complaints that I might have had about the writing.
If you know the previous work of Lasse Hallström (My Life as a Dog, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Cider House Rules, The Shipping News, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen), you know what you’re getting into here: no intellectual puzzles or gut-wrenching tragedy, but a bubbly romance in a fairytale village – as much travel porn as food porn – with fun, quirky characters and conflicts that are resolvable. It’s a deliberately feel-good film whose social message never veers too far into dark alleys or preachy podiums. But you’ll walk out of the cinema feeling like, given the right combination of spices, there’s still some ray of hope for diverse humanity to learn to get along.
