Best movie of this year hands down!

You won't be disappointed!

Sorry, this movie sucks

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This is a real movie foodie's movie. Warning, after watching this movie you may think that you have culinary skills that you do not have. Or if you are like me, perhaps you do. I learned so much from this movie about cooking and plating. With all of the major food scenes time lapsed, all I had to do is play and pause on the recipes I wanted to create, and it worked out well for me. I think you could do it too. The story line is a bit fuzzy for me. The food was so captivating until I really didn't miss the story at all. The kitchens will make you drool as well if you are into high quality cookware and china, you will again love the movie.Let's talk food. The food is as the title says, haute cuisine which in French mean High Cooking as in higher status folks eat this, high calorie, high cholesterol and high priced food making it the luxury gourmet food we all want to try at least once. The food stylist for this lovely romp through food land is Gérard Besson and to him I say, "Merci."

I'm a bit surprised to find myself in disagreement with other reviewers but this movie is a) actually boring b) the actress, although a good professional, is actually that: a soulless professional c) the " president" is totally miscast d) even the recipes, in their farfetchedness, are completely uninteresting. The rhythm of the gags is repetitive, no plot, no drama. Just the usual surprised, smiling faces of the ( supposedly) typical Frenchmen when they hear yet another recipe declaimed by a loving, caring chef. One of the few films that I didn't finish watching and that can be easily forgotten. I'm sure that other people might disagree and I accept that but, sorry, that's my opinion.

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.

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.