For her first feature film since Liverpool in 2012, director and screenwriter Manon Briand dives into the world of culinary competitions. Started in September, filming of the film The Chief and the Customs Officer is ending these days.
It’s a brunch scene like no other which takes place in the dining room of an old house, located on the edge of a country row in L’Assomption. Victor Meyer, a French chef in need of fame played by Édouard Baer, serves Sonia Latendresse (Julie Le Breton), her father (Normand Chouinard) and her daughter Lili-Beth (Élodie Fontaine), a soft-boiled egg placed on a nest green peas and cucumber and accompanied by potato mousseline. A little improvised creation using ingredients from the fridge. This is exactly the kind of “Instagrammable” dish that Samuel Sirois could serve for a casual brunch. Last January, this professor from the Institute of Tourism and Hospitality of Quebec (ITHQ), with the Canadian team, obtained 11th place in the final of the Bocuse d’or, the largest culinary competition in the world.
For several weeks, Samuel Sirois has been acting as an advisor and culinary stylist on the set of the film The Chef and the Customs Officer, which was filmed mainly in Montreal and Montérégie, but also in L’Assomption, where the house which became that of Sonia and Lili-Beth. Her job is to bring the dishes imagined by Manon Briand into the real world.
Although on screen, the sense of sight eclipses that of taste, it is out of the question for him to deliver dishes that are only extraordinary in their visual aspect. “My mentor Gilles Herzog often told me: “Taste, taste, taste!”. I am unable to suggest a dish that is plastic. It must be good too, even if it complicates the process. »
In this feature film, which promises to be a “comedy with subtle humor”, Victor, a French chef living in the United States, tries to help Lili-Beth win a mini-chef competition. He must face the hostility of the village towards his mother Sonia, an intransigent customs officer who had initially blocked his entry into the country. However, says Julie Le Breton, “she realizes that her daughter doesn’t have much chance of winning since all we eat is quite a bit of croquettes! “.
Quickly, the little girl, who has no cooking skills, is told that she will hit a wall. Many of her opponents already know how to cook emblematic dishes of Lyon chef Paul Bocuse, dishes that the director wanted to show on screen, such as fish in a crust.
“Tell you how many issues, challenges and impossible things we had to go through! », says Manon Briand. “I can’t talk about it now, but there are some big punches in the film that caused problems, if only for sourcing. It took phenomenal contortions to get there. »
Although Lili-Beth is not aiming for the Bocuse d’or, the cooking she is taught borders on high-flying, with a good-natured side, notes Samuel Sirois. “It’s a cuisine that is delicate, a little more refined. The chef is trying to pass on his knowledge to a child, so you shouldn’t go to too high levels either. »
But Lili-Beth is a determined girl, notes her interpreter, Élodie Fontaine, 10 years old, who is making her first film, but not her first time in the kitchen. “I don’t do competition-level cooking, more like “I can make food for my children if I have them later”! »
This idea for a scenario had been simmering in Manon Briand’s mind for around ten years. Passionate about cooking shows, it clicked for her while watching a documentary on the Best Workers in France competition. “It both shocked and amazed me to think that there are people who spend years training to make dishes to perfection. For me, cooking is something spontaneous, an exchange. » The frustrated chef she imagined was later joined by a customs officer, the one who increases the stress of many travelers when they return to the country, a sausage under their hat or an extra bottle of wine.
French actor Édouard Baer (Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cléopâtre, Mademoiselle de Jonquières) shares with the director this affection for cuisine focused on others. Ambassador of Bigorre black pork for several years, he was the owner of a Franco-Moroccan cuisine restaurant, Les Parisiennes.
“I really like people who cook food for people. I love being in the kitchen,” confides Édouard Baer.
Besides cooking, it is a film about transmission and about life which offers a new chance, he notes. “I think it’s mostly a film about how we can be a little girl or a man my age, go through [a difficult time], help each other and learn as much from each other. other”, underlines Édouard Baer, for whom this is the first Quebecois film.
Sylvain Marcel, Élodie Fontaine, Lélia Nevert, Oussama Farès, Douaa Kachache, Michèle Deslauriers and Dominic Paquet complete the cast of this film produced by Pierre Even (ITEM 7) and co-produced by Lætitia Galitzine (Chapka Films).
