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Cookery as a metaphor for a deliciously lived life

04 March 2010 / 14:03:00  GRReporter
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The film version of the book was entrusted to novice film director Vassilis Tselemengos, whose most successful prior credit was the TV series "Close Your Eyes". Maria Powell’s script  focuses on the game of erotic passion and culinary rivalry. Two different men share Nana while tastes and smells have been mobilized as an aphrodisiac in the parallel connections between them.

Damoklis (George Horafas) is a famous aesthete-chef enjoying an international career, and also the owner of a gourmet restaurant in Athens. Dimitris (Kostas Markoulakis) is a sailor and ship’s cook. The overwhelming object of their passion – the dazzlingly beautiful, capricious and mysterious Nana (Katia Zygouli) poses as a model at the Art Academy, while living at breathtaking speed in parallel "tracks". Hostages to Nana’s love, the two leading adversaries are challenged to confront each other on the erotic and culinary arena, while the plot unfolds in the line of comparison and rejection between them.

The two internationally renowned Greek actors, and Zygouli (an ex-model and wife of Sakis Rouvas) are the prestigious bait to hopefully attract audiences. But after the manifold message of A Touch of Spice (Πολίτική κουζίνα), that raised the bar high for Greek cinema in the orbit of cooking as a metaphor for deliciously lived life, "Dangerous Cookery” leaves an aftertaste of a light but not especially nourishing breakfast.

Cinema productions with profound messages, like Marco Ferreri’s movie La Grande Bouffe - existential anxiety and a metaphor for self-destructive Western civilization mingled with hyperconsumerism, the Dane Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast or Lasse Hallström’s movie Chocolat leaves Dangerous Cooking lagging behind a seemingly unconquerable “European dream”. 

Tags: Dangerous cookery Literature cinema
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