CHRISTIAN Vincent has made a charming film about Danièle Delpeuch, who for two years was the personal cook for French president Francois Mitterand.

In the film, she’s called Hortense and Catherine Frot plays her with agreeable charm and an adequate battery of kitchen skills.

Danièle’s family background in the Perigord was similar to Mitterand’s, who was weary of the fancy cooking from the Elysee Palace kitchen. Using fresh, seasonal produce to its best advantage (which is pretty damn exciting), for two years she gave the president the kind of food he yearned for.

It helped that she had no budgetary constraints. In France, no VIP has a bigger “I” than the president.

The film is as much about Palace politics as about food. Canberra residents will recognise the scene well enough, jockeying for influence, flexing bureaucratic muscles, petty jealousies and the arrogance of those higher up the ladder. The film observes these with a kind of resigned dispassion as if to say, learn to play this game or go under.

The film brackets its Paris sequences with Danièle’s time at a French Antarctic research station. This is unremarkable except for one shortcoming that I consider unforgivable. The actors playing an Australian TV crew visiting the station are not Australian. Have we nobody capable of playing such minor roles ?

Food is a difficult movie subject, about one of two human senses with which only direct contact can deliver the total experience. “Haute Cuisine” is not on the top layer of the food genre. But it’s digestible enough.

At Palace Electric