Tazzeka

This movie is an example of what is evidently emerging as a new sub-genre in film: movies about young people who develop an interest and talent in some aspect of gastronomy, want to pursue it at the highest level, but have to leave home to do so and therefore deal with family members who do not understand why the young man can't be satisfied with the same-old same-old that is good enough for everyone else.

The first, very successful example of this sub-genre that I saw - and very much enjoyed - was The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014), about a young Indian who starts by cooking traditional Indian food in his father's transplanted Indian restaurant, but eventually aspires to cook in a great Parisian restaurant. More recently there has been Uncorked (2020), about a young American who grew up working in his family's Memphis ribhouse but developed a fascination with fine wine that leads him to want to become a sommelier rather than carry on the simple rib restaurant his grandfather and father had developed.

Now, in this movie, which dates from 2018, we find the odyssey of a young Moroccan who wants to do more than just cook standard Moroccan fare in a small-town Moroccan restaurant, aspiring to try new dishes in a great French restaurant that values creativity. He too has to deal with all the locals who can't understand why he can't just go on making what they have always eaten. I very much enjoyed the first half of this movie, set in a small Moroccan town. The protagonist, Elias, has to deal with the closed-mindedness of those around him, people who, as in the other movies, can't accept one person's desire to do something different as just that without interpreting - and resenting - it as a dismissal of what they themselves have always done. What I would have liked here would have been some exploration of what made his grandmother's, and then his cooking different from what everyone was used to.

The second half of the movie, which deals with Elias' time in Paris, I found less satisfying. It is less focused, and skips over some very important elements (how Elias got to Paris, then how he and his friend finally become a success). It often reminded me of the less interesting, though certainly very moving, parts of a similar French movie, Fahim (2019), dealing with the miserable life of a Bangladeshi chess player and his father who go - illegally - to Paris so that the son can study with a chess master there. The love interest in this movie, never very satisfying even in the first part, just peters away in the second half.

This is certainly worth watching, but I found it less involving after the protagonist left Morocco.