Food porn lovers unite.
The New York Asian Film Festival ran from June 30 to July 16. For more information about what you missed, click here.
It’s a curious thing that romantic comedies somehow became the most hidebound and formulaic of movie genres; matters of the heart are one of the few things almost every viewer has at least a little experience in. And yet, by and large, the romantic comedy clings to its tropes and its cliches with all the barely concealed desperation of a man with a three finger grip on the edge of a cliff.
Which is to say, most of them are borderline unwatchable.
It is an accomplishment of note, then, whenever a romantic comedy manages to be funny and entertaining and effective even while embracing all the cliches inherent to the genre.
This Is Not What I Expected is the story of a maverick hotel chef that doesn’t play by the rules, and a fastidious millionaire undergoing an extended tete a tete that involves no sex, but a crapload of food porn.
And it really does work.
The film opens with an image of wagyu beef, being grilled to rare perfection, shot with all the slow motion sensuality of a behind the scenes video for a Vogue cover shoot.
And so, within the first thirty seconds, the gauntlet has been thrown: this is most definitely a movie that will be a competition between the food and the actors to see which one will look the sexiest.
The consumer of said sexy beef is Mr. Lu (movie legend Takeshi Kaneshiro), who rhapsodizes over the most effective method of preparation, and who fires an employee who points out it might not be the best use of his time to spend two hours on his fancy lunch when there’s money to be made.
Then he flies into a rage when the ex-employee attempts to apologize.
In this moment, we learn pretty much everything we need to know about who Mr. Lu is as a person and how difficult it’s going to be to break thru to his cold, cold heart.
(Perhaps thru the stomach, maybe…?)
Meanwhile, we meet the tattooed hellion Gu Shengnam (the instantly winning Zhou Dongyu) vandalizing the car of the cheating boyfriend of her best friend Zhaodi, only to find out she has attacked the wrong car.
If you live to be a million years old, you’ll probably never guess whose car she’s actually defaced…
When she’s not keying accusations into expensive cars and earning the wrath of disagreeable rich hunks, she wastes her talents, creating wildly inventive but underappreciated culinary masterpieces in the kitchen of a luxury hotel.
If you love to be TWO million years old, you’ll probably never guess who has just checked into Room 1123 to assess said hotel for potential acquisition…
I will reiterate: this is very much a romantic comedy, in the broad strokes, not unlike pretty much every other one you’ve ever seen. There’s even a nonstop series of jaunty pop tunes blaring in the background of every scene.
And do we got montages set to at least half of those songs? You bet your sweet keister we got montages set to at least half of those songs!
So yes, it’s safe to say that editor turned first time director Derek Hui isn’t exactly trying to reinvent the wheel here. But where the film shines is in the unique way in which the two would-be lovers interact. For when the hotel’s menu becomes the make-or-break factor in Lu’s decision to buy or not buy, it falls to Shengnam and her almost supernatural skill in the kitchen to save the day.
This extended set piece is the best part of the movie, in which the act of cooking and consuming becomes both a game and an unwitting seduction. Shengnam is an artist; everything she makes has a story told by the ingredients and flavors she chooses. The prickly but analytical Lu delights at deciphering the logic behind Shengnam’s ingredient choices, and Shengnam enjoys the challenge of constantly surprising this most demanding of guests. And the fact that neither one knows the other is on the receiving of their attentions makes it all the juicier.
The particular way this tension is drawn out does wonders to elevate the film, because Mr. Lu is not a pleasant character at all. He’s utterly hilarious in his entitled prissiness, but often comes off more as the villain of a snobs vs. slobs comedy than the ostensible romantic lead. And Dongyu as Shengnam is so utterly winning that one is almost loathe to see her wind up with him, as she inevitably must.
But most important of all, the film is genuinely hilarious. Which, strangely, seems to be one of the hardest things for a romantic comedy to get right. Hui’s background in editing hard hitting action (he previously worked his magic on such recent cult classics as Kung Fu Killer and Man Of Tai Chi) lends itself seamlessly to the maintaining of the film’s frantic, anything goes rhythm. And the loosey goosey nature of the script allows for laugh out loud tangents and sight gags that it would be a crime to spoil, except to praise the way the film abuses Lu in the second act as he embarks on a series of attempts to discover the identity of his mystery cook.
It’s an overall great cast; besides Dongyu and Takeshi Kaneshiro (who, being Takeshi Kaneshiro, does an amazing job with a character that could have been deeply unpleasant to watch with a less skilled actor), special credit has to be doled out to Tony Yang, hilarious in the small role of the hotel’s amiably smarmy general manager, and ex-boyfriend to Gu Shengnam. Sean Sun and Ming Xi also deserve a bit of credit as the obligatory best friend characters who undergo a secondary romance of their own; their bits of the story are dashed off with minimal effort, a flaw they overcome through sheer charisma alone.
But in the end, every last one of them is upstaged by the food, all of which is sexier than any mere human could ever hope to be.
Not to give away the inevitable ending, but I’m a sucker for romantic comedies that end with a smaller gesture than the big kiss, and this one is uniquely sweet.
