Toscana
The cuisines of Copenhagen and Tuscany meet in a dry, delicious hymn to the sins of the father and the possibilities of salvation.
Salut! Cristiana Dell'Anna and Anders Matthesen
Toscana is the Danish for Tuscany. And like every Danish film shot in Italy, there is an arresting juxtaposition of flavours, a Nordic piquancy tempered by a Mediterranean warmth. Toscana is also about cuisine, and films about food and cooking are invariably wonderful. Here, the accent is on the chef, in this case Theo Dahl (Anders Matthesen), a Michelin-starred prodigy consumed by his quest for the ideal. And his kitchen is part artist’s studio and part battlefield, a stage set for Gordon Ramsay-style pyrotechnics.
By choosing such pictorial ingredients, the writer-director Mehdi Avaz is already at an advantage: the Tuscany countryside and the preparation of transcendental food are both visual nirvana. Throw in a glacé score by Thomas Volmer Schulz – pinching the full flavour of Ennio Morricone's Cinema Paradiso – and you have the cinematic equivalent of a luxurious weekend in Chiantishire. For full evocation, the film opens on a black screen accompanied by the sonorous sound of Tuscan bells. It is the funeral of Geo Thal, whose dying wish was that his estranged son, Theo, should inherit his Italian estate, including the restaurant Castello Ristonchi. On the very day that Theo learns of his father’s death, he is preparing a meal to seduce a potential investor’s wallet. And nothing must come in the way of Theo’s pursuit of culinary perfection – even his father’s death.
As much a character study as a hymn to the healing qualities of food, Toscana stars the Danish stand-up comedian and actor Anders Matthesen, who also takes a producing credit here. His Theo is a man possessed, for whom cooking is an art form in which his arsenal of utensils includes a ruler and a pair of tweezers. But following an incident in which his temper gets the better of him, he is confronted by his mother (the excellent Ghita Nørby) who tells him that, “even exceptional people need to be happy.”
Deserting his comfort zone, Theo travels to Tuscany to sell his father’s estate to help finance his restaurant in Copenhagen. He is planning to settle matters immediately, but hadn’t bargained on a more leisurely way of doing things in Italy. He is also appalled by the food and the service of his father’s restaurant, but there’s a message to be learned here: be careful who you’re rude to…
Toscana feels like it might be more predictable than it actually is, and there are as many nuggets of wisdom as there are mouth-watering recipes – and surprises. A morose Matthesen cuts a vaguely comic figure, if his life wasn’t such a tragedy. His anger is borne not just from frustration but from deeper issues, the reality of which emerge as he steps back into his father’s past. While he attempts to come to terms with his late parent, he realises that Dahl Snr was a different person to the people he, himself, is about to displace. So who, in fact, was the better man?
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Anders Matthesen, Cristiana Dell'Anna, Ghita Nørby, Lærke Winther, Andrea Bosca, Sebastian Jessen, Christopher, Karoline Brygmann, Ari Alexander, Thue Ersted Rasmussen.
Dir Mehdi Avaz, Pro Mehdi Avaz and Puk Lodahl Eisenhardt, Ex Pro Anders Matthesen, Screenplay Mehdi Avaz, Ph Michael Sauer Christensen, Pro Des Mads Pallisgaard, Ed Anders Hoffmann, Music Thomas Schulz, Costumes Anette Hvidt, Sound Alex Pavlovic.
Rocket Road Pictures/SF Studios-Netflix.
92 mins. Denmark. 2021. Rel: 18 May 2022. Cert. 12.
