Le Grand Chef (2007)1

Review By Rein Zahrein Based on the best-selling comic book series by Hur Young Man, Le Grand Chef, directed by Jeon Yoon Soo (My Girl And I, Besa Me Mucho) stood on the #1 spot in Korea for about three weeks. It touched on a famil­iar ter­ri­tory in the likes of films shown just a few months back such as No Reservations and Ratatouille. Le Grand Chef revolves around the rivalry between two men as they bat­tle it out for the title of best chef of the nation. What dif­fer­en­ti­ates this movie to any other ‘cook­ing’ movies is that it not only has depth in the char­ac­ters, it also, in a way, teaches the audi­ence a lit­tle some­thing that most peo­ple know but unfor­tu­nately often ignore, which is culture.The main char­ac­ters in this movie, Sung-Chan played by Kim Kang-Woo and his rival, Bong-Joo played by Lim Won-Hie have what I call “real­is­tic human traits”. Both char­ac­ters were shown to be strong indi­vid­u­als yet each have their own weak­nesses. Each were shown to have strug­gled at one point in their lives which even­tu­ally led to their suc­cess in the future. But for one, his suc­cess was short-lived when a tragedy occurs that lost him his chance to be one of Korea’s great­est chefs. Running through the nar­ra­tive is plenty of flash­backs into the ances­try of the rival chefs, which had a sim­ple mys­tery on the sins of their ances­tors, adding some form of depth into the hatred these men have toward each other. For once, in my opin­ion, flash­backs were as effec­tive as they were enter­tain­ing. Viewers might find it inter­est­ing to find how a return of an object could set the wheel of des­tiny to turn. Once it started, it was like a domino effect and sud­denly the pieces fall into place. What started off as a com­pe­ti­tion to win over the title of the Royal Chef, turned out to be a whole dif­fer­ent story when his­tory is involved, and past mis­takes make a return and plays a piv­otal role in how the sto­ry­line ends.It is inter­est­ing to see a film that empha­sizes so much on cul­ture and his­tory as much as this film does. Le Grand Chef por­trays that no mat­ter how long it has been, cul­ture, if kept prac­ticed, will live on for­ever. This film had empha­sized the strong Korean cul­ture through the use of food, how every ingre­di­ent in a dish rep­re­sents an aspect of the coun­try. This film won the hearts and stom­ach of the audi­ence with daz­zling, mouth-watering images that high­light some of the best culi­nary dishes in Korean cook­ing. Satisfying the view­ers’ appetite while throw­ing in some sprin­kles of wis­dom, Le Grand Chef had the audi­ence chant­ing “bon appetite” all the way.Those who crave for a light-hearted roman­tic com­edy with a dash of heart-warming back-stories, this is the movie for you. There was not a sin­gle dull moment in this film and I assure that you will not regret ever watch­ing it. It really takes you on roller­coaster ride of high and low and that gave Le Grand Chef its success.The secret of the per­fect end­ing is its begin­ning. And the begin­ning of Le Grand Chef is noth­ing short of a genius.