Delicious (Encore screening)

Trailer for Delicious here The best films depicting the preparation and love of fine cuisine should come with a trigger warning: viewers should either eat beforehand, or have a reservation in place. Thus, as with Big Night, Chocolat and Babette’s Feast, Festival audiences attending Éric Besnard’s mouth-watering new historical comedy Delicious can only consider themselves duly forewarned.

The story is set in 1789 France, where prior to the dawn of the Revolution, gastronomy remains strictly the domain of the aristocrats; indeed, the prestige of a noble house is entirely dependent on the quality and reputation of its table. So, when the talented but prideful cook Manceron (Grégory Gadebois, Love at Second Sight, AF FFF18) serves an unapproved dish of his own creation at a dinner hosted by the self-entitled Duke of Chamfort (C’est La Vie’s Benjamin Lavernhe), the repercussions are brutal, and he is promptly dismissed.

The wounded Manceron swears off his passion and retreats with his son to a regional inn visited only infrequently by travellers, and where vegetable soup is the common meal. But when a mysterious woman (Isabelle Carré, De Gaulle, AF FFF21; Moving On, AF FFF21) arrives and offers to pay to become his apprentice, the stage is set for a wildly enjoyable tale of reignited passion, mentorship and revenge... and of the creation of France’s very first restaurant.