There’s something fundamentally cruel about watching food movies before dinner. Especially French ones. Haute Cuisine is doubly unkind, but more about that in a moment. Watching scene after scene of utterly delicious looking food on an empty stomach is a particular kind of masochism and for those thus inclined; the dishes served from the kitchens of Haute Cuisine are magnificent. Sadly, in most other respects, the menu is found wanting.

This curiosity starts on board a ship heading to a French Antarctic station. A film crew is making a documentary and, for reasons uncertain, become entranced by intense Hortense (Catherine Frot), the station’s beloved chef. She’s about to return to France and in flashback we learn she was once plucked from relative obscurity to head the President’s personal kitchen, raising the obvious question, why is this admired woman now at the other end of the world? And why is Hortense being so elusive?

That we never find out is the most problematic of a string of narrative irritations which riddle this potentially cheery feature. It’s clear that Hortense is an artist who has riled professional feathers, that M. President’s fondness for her traditional style riled more feathers. And this is almost enough to carry the film: scenes at the Presidential Palace are twee but lovingly shot, Hortense’s relationship with her personal staff is amusing, their food is mouth watering. What is not is the obscure and pointless return to the Antarctic wrap that feels shoe-horned from another movie the director wanted to make.

With distracting questions that neither expand the story nor fulfil the viewer, the result is simply confusing. Why is the ‘Australian’ journalist’s accent more Aix than Aussie? Why is she so interested in Hortense? Is there some unrealised infamy? If so, we never find out as Haute Cuisine quickly reduces to a familiar chef-as-artist trope with no flair to call its own. Frot is tasty enough but can’t hide the unkindest cut: a film that is more a trifle than the truffle it desperately wants to be.

// COLIN FRASER

Previewed at Hoyts Studio 12 theatrette, Sydney on Wednesday 31st January, 2013