Starring: Marie Richardson, Peter Stormare, Sussie Ericsson, Carina M Johansson, Bjorn Kjellman, Klas Wiljergard, Wilhelm Johansson
Distributor: Maslow Entertainment
Runtime: 102 mins. Reviewed in Aug 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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This subtitled Swedish film is about a group of middle-aged women looking for a new lease of life, and finding it in a weekly cooking class with a Swedish chef.
The film is the directorial debut for Swedish director, Annika Apelin. It is a romantic comedy with strong culinary appeal.
Karin (Richardson) and her husband come together with a group of their friends and relatives to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary, and they want to do it in style. In the midst of their celebration, Karen discovers accidentally that her husband Sten (Kjellman) has been unfaithful to her, and she is shattered. The secret comes out when Karin discovers an intimate photo of another woman on his iPhone.
After such a long time together, Karin thought her relationship to her husband was ideal. Seeing the photo, Karin confronts her husband about his betrayal, and, surprised at what she has discovered, he falls from a balcony and ends up injured in hospital. His accident leaves Karin alone to contemplate her future, and to look for new purposes in life.
In her efforts to pick herself up from acute unhappiness and despondency, an old school friend, Monika (Johansson), and a mutual friend, Pia (Ericsson), talk Karin into joining a cooking class conducted by renowned Swedish chef, Henrik (Stormare). In class, she rekindles childhood friendships, and finds commitment to life energised among the amazing dishes that Henrik cooks. The group of women name their club, the ‘Tuesday Club’, because it always meets on that day of the week.
Good food and solid friendship lie close to the heart of the movie, and it is in Henrik’s cooking class and his ‘Hot Kitchen’ where Karin finds new friends, and learns to better appreciate past relationships. At first, Henrik is reluctant to teach his new group the art of fine cooking, and the women in the group are initially unwilling to follow his advice. But their enthusiasm wins him over, and he also finds himself romantically attracted to Karin.
This is directed to be a feel-good movie where good food and new opportunities to enjoy life produce reassessments of how best to appreciate what life has to offer. In the midst of exciting aromas in a hot kitchen, Karin takes comfort in finding herself surrounded by supportive and understanding friends. However, the movie spirals downwards when food, friendship, and good cooking start to lose their relevance as the movie targets audience contentment by exploring how to look elsewhere romantically after marital relationships go wrong.
Apelin fills her movie with characters, who find togetherness and happiness by surrounding themselves with culinary excitement and stimulation. The movie portrays life with good friends, especially those who appreciate good Asian cooking heavy with aromatic spices, but it descends into shallow romanticism. It charms en route to stress the value of the need to share one’s troubles with others when the going gets tough, but this is before the film exposes viewers to a double dose of marital infidelity that masks the movie’s main concerns.
Images of wonderful food on plates and cooking in steaming frypans provide an escapist night out, and witty dialogue occurs to sustain the pace. The romantic interludes involving Karin, Sten and Henrik are included to engender tension and keep human interest alive, but they distract from the film’s main thrust. Mixing friendship, fine food, and good eating, with searching for ready love when disappointed, delivers a film that loses its way.
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