MOVIE: SOUL KITCHEN
In Soul Kitchen, Turkish-German director Fatih Akin marries earnest character moments with absurdist situational humour to extol the virtues of love and livelihood. Zinos (Adam Bousdoukos), a young restauranter, is in the doldrums – his girlfriend has moved to Shanghai, his unreliable ex-con brother is demanding charity and a smarmy property shark wants to manoeuvre him out of his modest eatery. But even as Zinos’ life becomes more and more tumultuous, he soon discovers a new-found zest for living. Soul Kitchen co-stars Moritz Bleibtreu, Anna Bederke, Pheline Roggan, Wotan Wilke Möhring and Birol Ünel, whose straight-faced portrayal of an impassioned, near-psychotic chef is riotously funny. While it suffers from occasionally uneven pacing, Soul Kitchen’is peppered with enough of the right ingredients – including plenty of idiosyncratic charm – to placate hungry audiences. A culinary delight! (JH)
