HAUTE CUISINE begins with middle-aged cook Hortense Laborie being rushed off to Paris to cook for ‘a senior public official’ who, surprise surprise, turns out to be the president. However, running the president’s private kitchen in the Elysee Palace is a completely different kettle of fish to running a bed and breakfast at Hortense’s farm in the French countryside.

Based upon the memoir of Daniele Mazet-Delpeuch and her years cooking for President Francois Mitterrand, Hortense (played with panache and a dry sense of humour by Catherine Frot) quickly wins over the President (Jean d’Ormesson as an elderly, slightly doddery tanned man with a shock of white hair). However the enjoyment of her role is marred by a running battle with the industrial-scale main kitchen, while upstairs various flunkeys have to be placated and won over.

The President loves Hortense’s simple home-style cooking that reminds him of his childhood, but despite this she is eventually outflanked by her enemies and ends her time in the seat of power making a stack of sandwiches.

The film alternates the French scenes with Hortense’s later self-imposed exile at a French base in the Antarctic, where an Australian TV crew (with very un-Australian accents) are trying to interview the cook in a rather pointless subplot.

Director Christian Vincent’s film is perfectly charming but others do what it does far better. It it’s meant to be a film about a cook’s obsession with food, BABETTE’S FEAST (recently re-released to mark its 25th anniversary) is far meatier; if it’s meant to be an everyman’s experience of the corridors of power, THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT written by the WEST WING’s Aaron Sorkin is more heart warming. HAUTE CUISINE is probably a film best watched at home on rainy Sunday afternoon with something appetising baking in the oven.

HAUTE CUISINE screened as part of this year’s French Film Festival at both the Chauvel and Palace Norton Street, Cinemas. The French Film Festival opened on the 5th March and plays till the 24th March, 2013.