Mark Reviews Movies: OTTOLENGHI AND THE CAKES OF VERSAILLES

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | September 24, 2020

Stretching for content and context, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles follows a team of pastry chefs, as each one prepares a dessert display for an event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Our host is Yotam Ottolenghi, a well-known chef, who has assembled the team, and while the other chefs plan and prepare, Ottolenghi gets a crash course in the history of the Palace of Versailles.

Everyone on screen does his or her job, for sure, but one wonders what director Laura Gabbert believed the interest would be in this story. Ottolenghi introduces the various chefs, as well as their unique styles and techniques. The chefs get to work, running into some minor obstacles and delays (An inordinate amount of time focuses on one pâsissière struggling to get the right consistency in her mousse mixture, and several technicians help to repair the motor for a cocktail whirlpool).

The designs here are intriguing on a culinary level (some forms molded out of chocolate, in particular) and certainly appear appetizing. When two of the chefs separately announce they're planning a display based on the famous gardens of the palace, though, we realize that the whole affair has been quickly and haphazardly organized.

The movie possesses a similar quality. There's no real theme here, except to watch the chefs at work and to receive barely a beginner's class in the 100-year history of the palace. Gabbert and Ottolenghi don't get into too much detail about the backgrounds of the chef team, and the actual work of making these sweet treats, aside from the mistakes, is glossed over. As for Ottolenghi's history lessons, they don't tell us much—and definitely not much that most people probably didn't already know (The palace was for the French monarchy, made for an ostentatious display of wealth, and didn't have a happy ending).

Everything, of course, works out in the end. The displays looks great. Ottolenghi gives a speech, iterating everything he has learned, and the chefs repeat the idea of their respective designs for an anticlimactically small crowd.

In a last-ditch effort to make some kind of deeper point, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles relates a comparison between the excesses of Versailles and those of our modern world. While a fair (if obvious) point, it's also one that feels disingenuous after the movie celebrates the excesses of this event.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products