A Taste of Hunger: Film about Restauranteurs Fraying Over Elusive Michelin Star Could Use More Salt
By Karen Gordon
Rating: B-
In spite of the name, and its setting in the high-end world of Michelin-star restaurants, A Taste of Hunger isn’t really about food.
Set in Copenhagen, the film is a tepid family drama about the cost of ambition, elevated by the performance of its leads.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is Carsten, a chef, married to Maggie (Katrine Greis-Rosenthall).
They own a modernist restaurant in Copenhagen called Malus, that they created together. And that business is woven into the fabric of their relationship.
(Maggie) Katrine Gries-Rosenthal and Carsten (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) despair over their Michelin star
Carsten creates the food, Maggie advises and manages the business, and together they create the restaurant’s atmosphere, bringing their dream to life together. They’re in sync about what they want it to be. And part of that is aiming very high, to earn a coveted Michelin star rating. For Carsten, this goal, this drive for excellence, has increasingly become consuming.
That singular focus has cut him off from the warmer needs of marriage and family. They have two young children, and Maggie, who is most often home with them, tends to be the person most involved with them. But the demands of the restaurant, and their ambitions for it, have split her attention away from family as well.
The stress ramps up when the two, on a rare night away from work, get a call saying that a diner, believed to be a Michelin representative, is at the restaurant. By the time they arrive, they hear that he left, in disappointment after being served a dish with an ingredient that had gone off.
Carsten is beside himself. Maggie sets out to find the diner, and persuade him to come back to give Malus a second shot. In this pressure cooker, Maggie also intercepts a letter addressed to Carsten that would bring an issue to light that would destroy everything for them. And Maggie tries to contain it all.
While the present day action plays out, director/co-writer Christoffer Boe gets at the way things have changed between Maggie and Carsten in a series of flashbacks. These chronicle, in part, the beginnings of their warm, playful relationship, and the way their ambitions have affected the children and their family life.
He and co-writer Tobias Lindholm have also divided the story into chapters, that are named for elements that are associated with food and cooking, like Heat and Fat. But, neither the flashbacks or the chapters seem necessary here, and they break the emotional through-line of the film.
There are difficult emotional moments for the couple, and for their children as well. But those frayed family ties are undermined by these devices There’s little insight, other than what we see on the screen.
It also leaves some holes in the main story line, and some, when revealed, feel like they’ve been dropped in. As a result the film’s structure works against the main dilemma here. It makes the film feel, at times, disjointed, perfunctory and more like a melodrama, than a subtle examination of a couple and a family in danger of being undone when ambition takes over.
However, there are some good elements here. Boe has also aimed at keeping the tone of the film calm, and as cool as the modernist surroundings, which, given where he’s taking the story, allows for us to observe quieter moments.
But, what really works are the thoughtful and committed performances of the two leads. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who came to fame as Jamie Lannister on Game of Thrones, is a solid, versatile, and internal actor who can convey the character’s state of mind without uttering a word. He’s wonderful to watch. He’s well matched here by Greis-Rosenthal’s performance as Maggie.
Their work is what elevates the film and keeps us watching.
And just one final note: Although Boe gives the film a proper and conventional ending, he’s done something unusual with this film.
He adds a post-credits final scene. If you want to find out what happens with Carsten and Maggie, watch, or scroll through the credits.
A Taste of Hunger, written by Christoffer Boe and Tobias LIndholm, starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Katrine Gries-Rosenthal. Available on DVD and On Demand April 26