Reviewed by PETER CALDER
(Herald Rating: * * * * )
Writers Rick Shaughnessy and Brian Kalata set their first feature script in Chicago but it's little wonder it ended up in New York. Director Bob Giraldi owns the trendy trattoria Gigino's in Tribeca, only a few blocks from Ground Zero.
One of
America's most prolific directors of commercials (the publicity notes say music videos too, but they specify only Michael Jackson's Beat It, which is a bit long in the tooth), Giraldi used Gigino's as the setting for this inventive and engagingly dark comedy.
Certainly there is no shortage of virtuoso filmmaking on show as Giraldi and his cinematographer Tim Ives slaver over the tiniest details of food preparation and cooking. This is the third of a trio of foodie movies of late but it is hard to recall something as saliva-inducing since Tampopo or Babette's Feast.
The writers - one a documentary specialist, one a comedy writer - show an assured touch, too, as they keep track of the events of a single evening in the busy restaurant.
The owner Louis Cropa (the distinguished Aiello is in his element in a performance of modest conviction and effortless charm) is a man disgruntled by success. What used to be a family restaurant is now one of Manhattan's hot spots.
His son Udo (Ballerini) cooks fabulous dishes which Louis - whose taste runs to simple peasant food, such as sausage and peppers - derides as fussy. Meanwhile, other dramas are simmering in the kitchen: his sous chef (Acevedo) has gambling debts and a lecherous eye on the head waitress (Wu); a couple of thick-necked Queens hoods are trying to shake him down; and a powerful, snaky restaurant critic (Bernhard) ill-disguised by a bad wig, has showed up without a reservation and is demanding the best table.
To say that roll call covers barely half the cast - and doesn't mention the best, Margolis' marvellous, acid-tongued, snob of a gallery owner - is to give some idea of the complicated and interlaced lines of narrative that the film intertwines effortlessly.
Before the opening credits have finished, there is a body to dispose of and we are invited to expect a standard grimy police procedural but the film has much more fun in mind.
It recalls Robert Altman, but the style is more chamber ensemble than the Altmanesque full orchestra. And the flavour marks it out as a true original. See it. But a few words of warning: don't go on an empty stomach.
Cast: Danny Aiello, Edoardo Ballerini, Vivian Wu, Kirk Acevedo, Mark Margolis Director: Bob Giraldi Running time: 98 mins Rating: R16, contains violence, offensive language and sex scenes. Screening: Rialto
Reviewed by PETER CALDER
(Herald Rating: * * * * )
Writers Rick Shaughnessy and Brian Kalata set their first feature script in Chicago but it's little wonder it ended up in New York. Director Bob Giraldi owns the trendy trattoria Gigino's in Tribeca, only a few blocks from Ground Zero.
One of
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