LOVE SARAH
DIRECTOR Eliza Schroeder
CAST Celia Imrie, Shannon Tarbet, Shelley Conn
PLOT Aspiring dancer Clarissa (Tarbet) loses everything when her mother Sarah dies in a cycling accident. To honour her legacy, Clarissa recruits her estranged, bohemian grandmother Mimi (Imrie), and with Sarah’s business partner Isabella (Conn) opens the Notting Hill bakery of her mother’s dreams.
WHEN USED WELL in a film, a sweet treat can weave new meaning into a scene as a sugardusted peace offering, a frosted, opulent mark of status or a proud display of heritage. In Eliza Schroeder’s light feature debut, the pristine cakes of the Love Sarah bakery are an extension of the late Sarah herself, both an homage to her craft and a means of keeping her memory alive. Set amidst the quirky independent businesses that sit at the heart of London’s Notting Hill neighbourhood, Love Sarah is lovingly run by three generations of women: mother (Celia Imrie), daughter (Shannon Tarbet) and best friend (Shelley Conn), with a little help from Matthew (Rupert Penry-jones), a former flame who charms his way into their new business.
Only these hot cakes ain’t selling, and with the risk of closure looming the team shift gears, ditching the richly stained macarons and lychee fondant for Latvian kringle and Japanese matcha cake in the hope of enticing a local multicultural clientele instead. “Something to remind them of home,” says Mimi.
Herein lies the central issue with this wellmeaning but undeniably reductive love letter to a city that prides itself on inclusivity. Schroeder and first-time screenwriter Jake Brunger clearly want to capture London’s immigrant make-up, yet they can’t resist filtering the film through a predominantly white middle-class lens. Watching these London residents flock to a bakery in a wealthy, tourist-heavy area to buy treats from a Michelin-star chef rather than from within their own communities feels distractingly disingenuous, especially in a film that so strongly binds food with identity.
This rose-tinted portrayal of a multicultural London paired with a string of vapid love interests overpower what could be a far stronger story about three women rebuilding their lives after Sarah’s death. Indeed, each character has some backstory to work with: Mimi is a retired trapeze artist; Clarissa a passionate dancer; and the central cast — especially Tarbet, who holds her own next to Imrie — are talented enough to handle weightier character development and bigger dramatic arcs.
The few scenes that the script allows of the women alone — Clarissa bonding with Mimi at a gymnastics class, Isabella triumphantly baking a complicated cake on her own — hint at what could have been a more emotionally rewarding narrative given the proper time and space to grow. There’s a strong argument that Penryjones’ bachelor chef isn’t needed at all, such is the loose grip that he holds on the story.
Love Sarah may appeal to an international audience with its fanciful displays of baked treats — a sequence depicting the good-looking Matthew carefully piping fondant and dusting chocolate over things is purely gratuitous — and its sunny aesthetic leans more towards Richard Curtis escapism rather than any sense of realism. Closer to home, however, this sugary-sweet slice of London fails to do service to the very people that it aims to celebrate.
VERDICT A serving of cultural appropriation in a cupcake case, Love Sarah aims to capture the rich, varied identity of London, but doesn’t use the right people to tell its story.