ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Glimmerubro It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

mallaverack This is not a bad film - with food prepared in such a grand setting as the Elysee Palace, we have the right ingredients for a movie of interesting visuals, but apart from this, everything else about "Haute Cuisine" is fairly lacklustre. Catherine Frot is terrific as chef Hortense but only within the context of her description and preparation of food. We learn very little about her and perhaps the chief reason being that this movie is virtually without a plot - despite initially foreboding deep conflict and resentment from other kitchen staff (entirely male), this is barely alluded to let alone shown. The flash-forwards to Hortense's next job at an outpost in Antarctica does very little to propel either plot or characterisation. I kept waiting for this side-story to shine some relevance on either plot or character but it failed to do so. The meetings between chef and president were very few and again, little was learnt from the conversations apart from the president's preference for simple, old-style cooking. I think viewers will be disappointed that this film promised understandable conflict of character and style and failed to deliver.Having said this, the film can still be enjoyed as an interesting expose on a style of cooking and its preparation.

gregorybnyc I've only seen Catherine Frot in one other movie--Coline Serreau's stunningly complicated CHAOS and she was marvelous. So when HAUTE CUISINE showed up on Netflix, I jumped at it. I love movies about food--WHO IS KILLING THE GREAT CHEFS OF EUROPE?, BIG NIGHT, MOSTLY MARTHA, EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN, BABETTE'S FEAST. They almost always manage to find humanity, absurdity and gently funny moments associated with food. Based on the real story of the first female chef who comes to cook for President Mitterand at the Elysee Palace, HAUTE CUSINE is a sweetly earnest story of Hortense Laborie, a fine French cook who is pulled away from her truffle farm in France to become the personal chef of the French president. Along the way she will encounter the petty and mean-spirited competition from the all-male kitchen that serves the palace, as she works tirelessly to provide the President with the foods he remembers from his childhood. The story is told in flashbacks as Hortense s finishing up a year-long stint as a cook for a research group in Anartica. What makes the film work is the casting of Catherine Frot as Hortense. This superb actress gives Hortense a tense, focused and convincing believability. Horrtense arouses total loyalty from her sous chef and maitre'd as the palace personalities around her make life often rather difficult. Losing her calm only once, Frot has a confrontation in the movie that is a very satisfying answer to the pettiness she is surrounded by at the Palace. It is in stark contrast to the grateful affection she is shown by the men she cooks for every day in coldly forbidding Anartica. HAUTE CUISINE is a quiet film of disarming charm. It doesn't break new ground, but it is a very satisfying movie which Catherine Frot at its center. Some have complained here that is a trifle and I'm not entirely disagreeing, but it is a movie worth seeing. I know I'll be seeing it again.

shawneofthedead Have you ever caught yourself planning where to have dinner… even while you're eating lunch? Singapore, as all who live here know very well, is a nation obsessed with good food. As far as humanly possible, many of us live to eat, rather than eat to live. So it's easy to see how a treat like Haute Cuisine – a thoroughly French film that greatly reveres the art and mastery of cooking – might hit the spot with local audiences.No-nonsense, straight-talking Hortense Laborie (Catherine Frot) – inspired by the real-life Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch – runs her own truffle farm in the French countryside. One day, she's rushed down to Paris to meet a potential employer: the President of France (Jean d'Ormesson), who's modelled after François Mitterrand. With the help of her sous-chef Nicolas (Arthur Dupont), Hortense prepares culinary feasts for a man who hankers after the down-to-earth home cooking of his childhood, even as she's forced to deal with politics and jealousy in the kitchens and corridors of the Élysée Palace.As a main course, Haute Cuisine serves up much for discerning movie- goers to savour. Hortense emerges as a formidable presence, her strength of character shining through her battles with the unwelcoming men in charge of the Palace's main kitchen. (Mazet-Delpeuch was the first female chef to serve in the Palace.) Her conspiratorial friendships with Nicolas and Jean-Marc Luchet (Jean-Marc Roulot), the President's maître d, are charmingly developed and effectively juxtaposed with her year-long sojourn in Antarctica spent cooking for a very different set of consumers. The film is beautifully shot, making good use of its access to the Palace grounds and lingering lovingly over Hortense's culinary masterpieces.Just don't expect to have your mind blown or your tastebuds completely tantalised. This is a competent, solidly-made film, but it trades a sense of dramatic urgency for its more gastronomic delights. Hortense's creations will have you salivating in your seat, rich and clearly delicious. Her few face-to-face meetings with the President, however, are sweet and understated rather than the stuff of history. Ultimately, Haute Cuisine is the cinematic equivalent of a good, solid meal – satisfying but not necessarily something to shout from the roof-tops about.

Mozjoukine The subject is OK and unfamiliar and 'Scope Eastmancolor production values are handsome - the close-ups of food are near obscenely gorgeous.Catharine Frot and the cast (largely unfamiliar abroad, even with Hipolyte Gyradot in there) impress though the eighty five year old TV personality fronting as President of the French Republic does seem a bit too fragile and we have to wonder about the accent of the Australian TV reporter pursuing Catharine. The Elysses Palace and the remote Iceland expedition are intriguingly shown. However we are left wanting the revelation, which they build up cross cutting the two situations, and it never arrives, stopping this from being more than a pleasant enough offering for the LADIES IN LAVENDER audience.