Audrey Lamy in The Kitchen Brigade. Image courtesy Madman Entertainment
M, 97 minutes
3 Stars
Review by © Jane Freebury
It’s not hard to imagine how working in a kitchen as a sous-chef under one gastronomic eminence or other, might get the ego bristling. It is a situation we have no difficulty in accepting in this lively, generous French social comedy featuring a chef under a female chef de cuisine, who throws her apron in to set up on her own. To then find herself running the canteen in a migrant hostel.
As an actor able to accomplish surly and simpatico simultaneously, Audrey Lamy is well suited to the role of sous-chef Cathy Marie, who responds in desperation to an advert to run a charming restaurant with demanding clientele, so-called. With encouragement from mentor Fatoumata Kaba, a well-known Instagram presence playing a character with the same name, Cathy joins the shelter staff. Her new kitchen has banks of microwaves and a pantry full of cans that give the game away, but she buckles down.
The clientele of young males awaiting migrant papers who are staying in the shelter live online and for their football, and care little for what is served up so long as it fills the space. As she is advised, they are happy on a diet of reliable favourites. Like ravioli, with apologies to the cuisine of France’s country next-door neighbour, and soccer, and that’s what they get. Cathy could coast, but she doesn’t.
Her new colleagues are down-to-earth Sabine (Chantal Neuwirth) and a new boss, someone who has also seen better days, Lorenzo. He is played by likeable Francois Cluzet, complete with unruly mane and the walking stick that he has swapped for his wheelchair pushed by Omar Sy in the multicultural French hit movie of 2011, The Intouchables. Another social comedy that tackled inclusion in its particular way.
Doesn’t aim for novelty but for reassuring comedy tropes that help make social issues, from frivolous to profound, more digestible
Of course, the hostel is run on an oily rag as they say in French and in English, with Lorenzo keen to keep the eight euros a day each that he is subsidised per person. While Cathy is keen to maintain the fantasy of plating up for individual customers and it’s Sabine role to keep the peace.
It’s well known that enthusiasm is infectious. So, it isn’t long before the new chef at the shelter is imparting her skills and passion for food to the boys, who are reputedly under 18 years and reputedly not ‘illegals’. Cultural norms can intrude when some resist accepting orders from a woman, even if she is the chief of the kitchen, but ways and means are found to navigate the issue.
From Cathy to the individuals in her unlikely ‘brigade de cuisine’, The Kitchen Brigade is crowded with characters, yet they each need to fall into role as individual members of a team. A list of this hierarchy of roles in the French kitchen can be found online and it is well worth a look. Cathy finds that an analogy with the roles on a soccer field is useful.
Audrey Lamy and team in The Kitchen Brigade. Image courtesy Madman Entertainment
Cooking classes develop with wide-ranging consequences. Teaching survival mathematics, Lorenzo finds they help in teaching equations. Skills advance other skills. And teaching cuisine spill into other areas, evening reading Proust.
A reminder that there’s ravioli, and then there’s ravioli
Director Louis-Julien Petit worked from a screenplay he wrote in collaboration with Sophie Besandoun, Liza Benguigui and Thomas Pujol. Petit’s most recent feature film, Invisibles, was a comedy-drama from 2018 set in a shelter for homeless women. It can be confused with The Intouchables of 2011, with which Petit has no connection, as far as I know.
Comedy needs well-defined characters, and we certainly have them here. From GusGus (Yannick Kalombo) to Mamadou (Amadou Bah) to Djibril (Mamadou Koita), they bring along their favourite dishes from home and very different backstories. It transpires that Cathy Marie has a backstory of her own.
The Kitchen Brigade doesn’t aim for novelty but for reassuring comedy tropes that help make social issues, from frivolous to profound, more digestible. There is the occasional jolt to reality. Like the use of Xrays to ascertain whether actual age matches stated age, that is, under-18, referencing the global people movements all around, and the importance of respect at every turn.
Food is the primary message here, however. You wouldn’t think that the benefits of quality food in institutional settings needed emphasising, but this warm-hearted social comedy is a reminder that there’s ravioli, and then there’s ravioli.
First published in the Canberra Times on 19 June 2022. Jane’s reviews are also published at Rotten Tomatoes