A film that will whet your appetite
JUST a few days back, with a mild what-to-write-this-column-on anxiety attack beginning to buzz around my brain like a wasp at a window, I found myself listening to an RNZ interview with chef Annabel Langbein.
Which quickly dispelled any ideas I had about her TV chef persona, as Langbein regaled a studio audience with one tale after another of hilariously ramshackle behaviour, usually with booze involved somewhere.
She then introduced the character of Daniele Mazet-Delpeuch, with whom Langbein struck up a friendship decades ago.
Mazet-Delpeuch went on to become the first woman to be a personal chef to the then President Francois Mitterand.
She cooked for nobility and world leaders for a couple of years, and then applied for and got a job at an Antarctic research station. That was despite being 60 at the time and having been told that the job was only open to men under 50.
The film Haute Cuisine isa fictionalised account of Mazet-Delpeuch’s life so far. While we’re waiting for the
documentary I hope is coming – maybe the seemingly unsinkable Langbein could make it? – it’ll do to be going on with. It’s on TVNZ OnDemand, for free.
Only a few hours after hearing about and then watching Haute Cuisine ,Iwas wandering around Te Papa when I saw an episode of the new TVNZ series National Treasures, which has been produced in collaboration with Te Papa and Auckland Museum. Host Stacey Morrison greets people who have answered the call to bring in their own taonga and treasures, and hears the stories that the disparate objects have to tell.
The first episode is a stunner, with Oscar Kightley understandably choked up at the sight of rescued benchtops from an Auckland school woodworking shop that were used in the 1970s and 1980s to hide Pasifika students from the New Zealand police, who had extended the infamous ‘‘dawn raids’’ to include high-school students.
It’s a startling revelation to kick off a series that promises to be far more than just some antipodean Antiques Roadshow. National Treasures is hugely recommended. This is a warm, informative and big-hearted delve into the
national character. More please. Also on TVNZ OnDemand.
You’ll also find on the same platform, Gardening With Soul, an astonishingly likeable film on the amazing Sister Loyola Galvin and her work at a convent in Wellington’s Island Bay. Gardening With Soul – which had a memorable opening night at the New Zealand International Film Festival a few years back – follows a year in the life of the then indefatigable 90-year-old, as she tends her gardens and attends to the souls of the people around her. This quiet, but penetrating film is an absolute treat. Do watch it.