Film Review: Soul Kitchen

Call it a sign of the times. For the past eight weeks, the Zena Palace in Nicosia has been showing Avatar in 3-D. Now, eight weeks is a long, almost unprecedented time to be screening the same movie, but I guess there’s a reason why the blue-people opus is now among the most successful films of all time (I’m resisting the non-inflation-adjusted measure that hails it as THE most successful). All good things must come to an end, however, and this weekend the Zena moves on – but here’s the catch: instead of one film it’s now showing two, An Education at 8 p.m. and Soul Kitchen at 9.45, and not every day but only from Monday to Thursday (Avatar holds on to the weekends and matinees). Never mind the crowds who’ve been filling the theatre for the past eight weeks: these new films are clearly only good for one show each – and I don’t know how long the run will be, but I’m guessing it’s considerably less than eight weeks.

There’s no criticism implied in that story. The Zena’s been in business for over three decades, and knows exactly what the Cyprus audience will turn out for. Besides, the success of Avatar is obviously a good thing if it means the cinema can afford to take a chance on something like Soul Kitchen. Here’s what frustrates me, however: Soul Kitchen is by no means a difficult film (neither is An Education). In any rational world, it shouldn’t count as ‘taking a chance’ to show something so vibrant, boisterous and crowd-pleasing. The only downside is that it’s in German, but so what? Isn’t English too a foreign language for the vast majority of people who watched Avatar?

Soul Kitchen borrows from several genres, without quite belonging to any. In a way, it’s a foodie movie: we don’t get the usual food-porn shots of dishes looking luscious – but there is a temperamental chef who thinks he’s an artist, and ‘Soul Kitchen’ is the name of a restaurant (a diner in a rundown part of Hamburg). This is also another of those films where a bunch of cheerful misfits triumph over the Establishment, insofar as the villain is a white German yuppie – a real-estate developer, no less – while our heroes are a jailbird, a Gypsy (the aforementioned chef) and an immigrant. Most of all, however, Kitchen is a feelgood party movie, a breezy celebration of irresponsibility – it’s accepted that its people don’t pay rent, or have medical insurance – that’s all about community: a melting-pot of characters coming together, forgiving each other’s flaws, and partaking of the sensual pleasures of food, sex and music.

Will it draw even a hundredth of the Avatar crowd? Fortunately, the film has a secret weapon – a hero who’s Greek, or more properly Greek-German (he and his brother even converse in broken Greek occasionally), automatically making it more palatable to cautious Cypriots. Then again, it also has a director (Fatih Akin) who’s Turkish, or more properly Turkish-German – Mr. Akin has been blending the two cultures throughout his career, most notably in Head-On (2004) and The Edge of Heaven (2007) – giving it a bicommunal flavour that may or may not appeal to local punters.

Those who check it out will have a good time – though it’s also true that Soul Kitchen, like most good parties, is rather sloppy when it comes to coherence. The plot involves Zinos (our hero) and his misfit cohorts turning ‘Soul Kitchen’ from a dingy greasy-spoon to a roaring success, but it’s not really clear how they do that; music helps, and there’s also mention of a nearby dance-school providing willing customers, but surely it takes more than groovy beats and a new DJ deck to create one of the hottest spots in town. Later, our heroes break into the yuppie’s office to steal some plans, and again it’s not quite convincing that these klutzy amateurs would be able to breach corporate security so easily – though the break-in turns out to be inessential to the plot, so it doesn’t really matter.

Then again, plotting isn’t everything. The point is energy, inventiveness, a willingness to clown and fool around – and the film delivers. Soul Kitchen has a Goethe-quoting waitress, a Turkish masseur called “Kemal the Bone Crusher”, raucous slapstick, lots of music and dancing, a chef calling someone a “gastronomic racist” and a girl dozing off during sex. You can pick at the holes in its fabric – but then you’d also have to pick at the Na’vi fighting tanks with bows and arrows in Avatar. If the People can enjoy eight weeks’ worth of tall blue thingys on a faraway planet, they should also be able to enjoy food, sex and music on Planet Hamburg in my opinion. Even if it is in German.