For his first feature film since Liverpool in 2012, director and screenwriter Manon Briand plunged into the world of culinary competitions. Beginning in September, filming of the film The chef and the customs officer ends 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), obtained with the Canadian team the 11e place in the final of the Bocuse d’or, the biggest culinary competition in the world.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
The dish created by Samuel Sirois for this improvised brunch scene: soft-boiled egg served with green peas, cucumber, broccoli, croutons, Brussels sprout leaves and potato mousseline.
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 that became Sonia and Lili-Beth’s is located. Her job is to bring the dishes imagined by Manon Briand into the real world.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Chef Samuel Sirois
I have exceptional free space. The only constraints are in terms of ingredients. We must respect the theme and the spirit of the film.
Samuel Sirois
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. »
PHOTO LAURENCE GRANDBOIS BERNARD, PROVIDED BY PRODUCTION
Samuel Sirois in action on the film set
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. »
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Director and screenwriter Manon Briand
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”! »
PHOTO LAURENCE GRANDBOIS BERNARD, PROVIDED BY PRODUCTION
Élodie Fontaine, interpreter of Lili-Beth
Performance cooking
This idea for a scenario had been simmering in Manon Briand’s mind for around ten years. Passionate about cooking shows, it clicked when she watched a documentary on the Best Workers of 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 such a spontaneous thing, 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 Cleopatra, 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.
PHOTO LAURENCE GRANDBOIS BERNARD, PROVIDED BY PRODUCTION
Director Manon Briand and actor Édouard Baer, on the film set
“I really like people who cook food for people. I love being in the kitchen,” says Édouard Baer.
I like the slightly imperfect in life. It’s more moving, things a little human. I would like my chef character, from time to time, to put his finger in the pan! I would. Not him.
Edward Baer
Besides cooking, it is a film about transmission and about life which offers a new chance, he notes. “I think it’s above all a film about how you can be a little girl or a man my age, go through [une période difficile]help each other and learn as much from each other,” underlines Édouard Baer, for whom this is his first Quebec 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).
The chef and the customs officer will be on display in the summer of 2024.