A CHEF IN LOVE

A CHEF IN LOVE has real entertainment value. Its amusing storyline follows a gifted chef, and its lavish spreads, harvest fruits, grapes, and gourmet cooking are repeatedly mouth-watering. The source review gives the film three stars for those pleasures.

But the film’s romantic center is an affair between Pascal and a woman twenty years younger than he is. Around that relationship are promiscuity, fornication, adultery, implied rape, murder, suicide, vulgarity, nudity, drunkenness, smoking, and bloody animal violence. The humor and beautiful food do not make those themes less serious.

This is also a film whose PG-13 rating is seriously misplaced, according to the source review. You should skip it, including if you are watching for the food.

In the Soviet Republic of Georgia in the early 1920s, young artist Anton translates manuscripts written by his chef uncle, Pascal Ichak, during Pascal’s last days under Communist rule.

Through those manuscripts and flashbacks, Anton learns how Pascal met Cecilia, a spirited Georgian princess twenty years younger than he was. Their relationship leads them toward Tbilisi, where Pascal hopes to open a restaurant. Along the way, he encounters Zigmund, an adversary whose presence will change the course of Pascal’s life.

Three stars means this is an entertaining film in limited ways. The storyline is amusing, and the film demonstrates Pascal’s intricate gourmet-cooking skills. Extended scenes of cooking, abundant harvest fruits, grapes, and lavish food spreads give it a visually sumptuous surface.

The film’s pleasures are undercut by its moral content. The source review describes the food and cooking as deceptive because they cover over lifestyles that bear no reflection of moral values. It concludes that the characters’ immorality throws a much dimmer light on the film.

The source identifies A CHEF IN LOVE as a romantic story with humanist and anti-communist elements. It presents love and sensual experience as central to the characters’ lives, but the relationships include promiscuity, fornication, adultery, and implied rape. Those choices depart sharply from a biblical view of faithfulness and sexual morality.

The film also portrays the takeover of the town by Communists as brutal and threatening. Yet its opposition to oppressive political control does not redeem the characters’ personal immorality. The beautiful harvests and gourmet cooking create a surface of pleasure, while the underlying lifestyle offers no reflection of moral values.

Scripture connects love with truth and faithful conduct, not merely appetite or romantic feeling: “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4).

A CHEF IN LOVE offers sumptuous food imagery and an amusing storyline, but those pleasures cannot cover its rampant immorality and graphic violence. Its PG-13 rating does not fit the content. Our answer is clear: SKIP IT. For better options, see.