“Food is love” is something you’ve heard a million times if you’ve watched “Top Chef” or just about any series where the stars wield saucepans. But in the movies, food is not just love. It’s everything.
The classic example is “Like Water for Chocolate,” where an unfortunate young woman’s dreams are thwarted by her family. In both the movie and the novel on which it’s based, her emotions – passion, disappointment, sorrow – become ingredients in the food she cooks. The characters who eat what she whips up experience sensual pleasure, worry, even death (it’s a tragedy).
Many films, including “Babette’s Feast,” “Tampopo” and “Eat Drink Man Woman,” focus on chopping and flambeing, but movies don’t have to be about food to be about food. Just like a movie protagonist who pets (or kicks) a dog, characters’ responses to food are a quick way to convey information, even in a movie that doesn’t have a feast at its center.
Think of the relationship between Elio in “Call Me by Your Name” and a very ripe peach, or the wholesome milk with which Cary Grant intends to poison Joan Fontaine in “Suspicion.” Of how the iconic line “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli” encapsulates the importance of family, even in the violent world of “The Godfather.” How Jimmy Cagney weaponizes breakfast in “The Public Enemy.” How Jessie Royce Landis reveals nouveau riche coarseness in “To Catch a Thief” by stubbing out her cigarette in a sunny-side-up egg. Remy the rat’s dedication (and a food critic’s eloquence) in “Ratatouille.” How both leads figure out who they are as they master cooking techniques in “Julie & Julia.”