Fatih Akin
Soul Kitchen

I was there, ready to wait for the trailers in sequence to end so I could fully immerse myself in Jim Sheridan's latest work entitled "Brothers": a great dramatic film, linear and symmetrical in structure, capable of deeply examining the negative outcomes of the Middle Eastern war for the veterans returning home. The theater, after the blue people of "Avatar," suddenly fills for 2 minutes with colors, laughter, and promises loudly said "I really have to see this," and so I realize that in the last year I must have seen dozens of dramatic works at the cinema and, maybe, a couple of comedies. And it is thus, by chance, that I feel like starting 2010 with the chaotic, funny and rhythmic "Soul Kitchen": the latest effort by Fatih Akin light-years away from the atmosphere of “Head-On” which I had seen and appreciated in its time.

Almost always comedies are based on the extremization of characters and the resulting hilarity of the grotesque/improbable situations the protagonists get themselves into. Soul Kitchen does not deviate from this rule. The cast is made up of a series of blatant caricatures. Zinos is a chaotic, energetic, and enthusiastic young second-generation Greek immigrant: proud owner of a dingy, smelly, and rotten place like the refined port clientele who, in total symbiosis with the decor, delight in frozen cream delicacies. Around this funny caricature revolve several satellites. Nadine is the beautiful and rich girlfriend who goes to China for work to be a reporter, Illias is the unreliable ex-convict brother with a gambling problem, and completing the picture is an authoritarian, proud, and amusing chef not very adept at the wise art of diplomacy.

It's a funny script, deliberately exaggerated in which you should not ask too many rational questions about the realism of the plot. Such questions would in fact remain strictly unanswered because it's clear from the start that it is a fairy tale. And a fairy tale must be so in the sense of being unachievable outside a book/screen, it must have the villain of the moment (the greedy ex-schoolmate/real estate agent eager for land on which to build and get rich), moments of despair (those with the girlfriend and the tax police/health office), and it obviously must conclude not only well but with fireworks. All the characters indeed grow thanks to their mistakes, for the better, they team up, becoming aware of the negative experience lived to unexpectedly rise to the incredible finale: forced more or less like a jumper running from half-court made by Shaquille O’Neal at the buzzer. But that's okay!

What really matters is how this stereotypical and predictable journey is told to us. The reason I am writing is that I find the director's approach successful. First of all, he inserts as a supporting actor the protagonist's back pain: the true source of the most hilarious gags of the whole film and an unusual and pleasant glue between Zinos's shaky present and uncertain rosy future. Lots of pace, with a frenzied succession of short and satisfying scenes that capture for us the old residential areas of a port city like Hamburg, indirectly speaking to us about the havoc and sense of destruction of those characteristic neighborhoods in favor of ever more expensive and excessive mega constructions. The bleak setting chosen for the film, very well described by the photography, is in stunning and successful contrast with the story. Praiseworthy is the sunny ethnic soundtrack, soul/rock with disruptive force that never leaves the film: not even in the few reflective moments.

The chosen cast, in which Adams Boudoukos and the cook Birol Unel stand out, is more than appropriate to succeed in rendering in the best possible way this intricate and pleasant comedy that will entertain you for an hour and a half, making you laugh heartily multiple times. That's enough to invite you to see "Soul Kitchen."

ilfreddo