Let’s cut to the important stuff first: In “Haute Cuisine” you will see many shots of food. Gorgeous cakes, well-browned chicken, beef in puff pastry, clams opening up as they are being cooked.
This kind of foodie movie relies on such sights, so we might as well acknowledge that “Haute Cuisine” succeeds on that front. It also tells a story, or at least delivers a slice of life based on a quirky true chronicle.
The script is liberally adapted from a memoir by Daniele Delpeuch, the first female chef in France’s equivalent of the White House, the Palais de l’Elysee.
She was summoned from the countryside to be the private cook for Francois Mitterand because the president wanted home-cooked meals the way his grandmother made them.
In the movie this character is called Hortense, a no-nonsense lady who isn’t daunted by the palace’s thoroughly male-dominated kitchen.
“That’s the last time I have lunch with those machos,” she tells her assistant after dining with the good old boys on her first day at work.
Hortense is played by veteran French actress Catherine Frot, whose subdued style fits the character. More animated is her sous-chef, a young man (Arthur Dupont) quickly won over by her habits (which include talking out loud through every ingredient of her recipes).
She dreams up mouth-watering lunches for the president and his guests, and eventually — as we suspected she might — she gets into a few conversations with the man himself (Jean D’Ormesson, not imitating Mitterand but playing an unnamed prez who needs to watch his butter intake).
These roll out along conventional lines, proving that even the powerful have simple tastes, blah blah blah.
For some reason director Christian Vincent has wrapped this thin but appealing tale in a framing story about Hortense’s subsequent yearlong stint cooking for workers in Antarctica. It happened to the real Daniele Delpeuch and is an unusual biographical note, but doesn’t add much here.
Vincent’s 1990 film “La Discrete” was a wonderful early work, but his subsequent films haven’t been seen much in the states. “Haute Cuisine” is a nice enough offering, but falls short in one way: too much sugar, not enough salt.
“Haute Cuisine” (two and a half stars)
The based-on-truth story about the first female chef (Catherine Frot) to cook in the presidential palace in France. Christian Vincent’s film is a pleasant comedy with plenty of foodie delights, though finally it offers too much sugar and not enough salt. In French, with English subtitles.
Rated: PG-13 for language.
Showing: Varsity.
John Cardinal Newman’s “The Idea of a University” was something of a work in progress when it was first published in the 1850s. It was a collection of his discourses and lectures in Dublin, Ireland, given while he was in the midst of establishing the school that would become the largest university system in Ireland.
The lectures revealed his thoughts on what he was trying to build there, as he was doing it. His skill as a writer managed to capture the energy as well as the penetrating logic of his thinking, and perhaps for that reason his ideas remain alive, if somewhat sequestered, in higher education today.
Cardinal Newman described a university this way: “It is a place which wins the admiration of the young by its celebrity, kindles the affections of the middle – aged by its beauty, and rivets the fidelity of the old by its associations. It is a seat of wisdom, a light of the world, a minister of the faith, an Alma Mater of the rising generation.”
Our world is very is different, of course, from the middle of the 19th century in a poverty-stricken Ireland struggling to recover from the disastrous potato famine. Yet while it must have seemed a dream to impoverished Ireland then, his idea became a reality and, remarkably, remains a part of our dream of what a university can and should be.
If you were to ask an interplanetary visitor what the purpose of a state university in America is today, the obvious answer would be: “Football.” That answer would be mistaken of course, as we earthlings all know. It neglects basketball.
There is another, more serious reason why the answer is, at best, incomplete.
If we look carefully we can still see traces of Cardinal Newman’s ideals not only in the musty corners of liberal arts programs but also, unexpectedly, in the highest of high tech education. While traces nourish nostalgia, though, they do not keep a dream alive. Today’s universities’ dreams are in thrall to a different energy source.
How else are we to explain the recent decision of Colorado State University to launch an effort to raise $250 million for a new football stadium for the purpose of attracting out-of-state students who pay higher tuition than Colorado residents? The project only makes sense if you accept the idea that a state university’s primary obligation is survival. With its life support system, taxpayer funds, dwindling in the face of cost increases, the university is morphing into a different, entrepreneurial organism, doing what is necessary to survive in a hostile environment.
Colorado State isn’t the only one. As state universities continue to be elbowed out of state funding flows by other public spending priorities, they have been forced to become more entrepreneurial. At the University of Washington, for example, this is a process that has been going on since the early 1980s when the state legislature first began to exhibit symptoms of a hearing problem regarding the university’s finances.
State universities will remain tax-exempt and to some degree tax-supported, but otherwise indistinguishable from any other business enterprise. There is nothing wrong with being a business enterprise; they are the heart of the American economy and the engines of our prosperity. Business enterprises, though, are driven by two forces: economics and a strong survival instinct. No dreams need apply.
It is economics, for example, that is driving universities to be more responsive to the immediate needs for workforce training. It is economics that underlies the move to jettison faculty tenure. It is economics that is motivating the “Dance of the Conferences” as schools attempt to elevate their teams’ level of play and television revenue to NFL and NBA standards.
It is also economics behind policies that attempt to attract more out-of-state and foreign students – sometimes openly, as Colorado State University is doing, or less publicly, as the University of Washington and other schools in recruiting foreign students to replace residents.
There is nothing illegal or inherently wrong about these moves, but the closer that state universities resemble business enterprises the farther they distance themselves from the dreams that established them; not only Cardinal Newman’s dream but the parents’ dreams of providing higher education opportunities for their sons and daughters — and a brighter future for each state.
The NCAA, supported by the Big Ten Conference, is making some efforts to halt the transformation of its athletic programs into “Mini-Me” versions of professional leagues, and those of us who love college sports wish them well.
Unless we change the underlying economic structure, though, we will not be able to stop the transformation of state universities into corporate brands and market-driven enterprises. J
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
