SOUL KITCHEN
Directed by Fatih Akin
Produced by Ann-Kristin Homann, Akin & Klaus Maeck
Written by Akin & Adam Bousdoukos
Released by IFC Films
German & Greek with English subtitles
Germany. 99 min. Not Rated
With Adam Bousdoukos, Moritz Bleibtreu, Birol Ünel, Anna Bederke, Pheline Roggan, Lucas Gregorowicz & Wotan Wilke Möhring
 

Fatih Akin, the director of one of the richest, most riveting films of the last decade (Head-On), takes a break from greatness with his trifling new comedy Soul Kitchen. This antic-driven mess is a wink to Heimatfilm, a postwar German genre known for sentimental, family driven plots, and idyllic rural settings. If the wink were farcical, or at least a smidgen wry, Akin might have relieved the audience of their expectations for a good film and entertained us with a hearty dose of sarcasm or irony. Instead, we are meant to take the hokey setup at face value and try to revel in the leaden jokes.

Akin conscripts a veritable brat pack of hot German actors to tell his story of friendship, family, and social change. That Head-On’s Birol Ünel is included in this mix is the film’s ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card. The twisty plot is quite simple: Zino (Adam Bousdoukos) is looking for a way to join his girlfriend, who has recently relocated to China, but he must find someone to watch his restaurant, which has just gone from gunky fish sticks to gourmet fare and is suddenly doing some serious business. His jailbird brother (all zuit suits and sweet talk) offers his services, but it doesn’t take a genius to guess that his business acumen won’t be up to snuff. Throw in a pesky tax collector, a fiendish gangster, and one unfortunate incident with a fridge and you get the idea.

I’m a firm believer that corny can be great, if infused with enough subtlety and charm, but this feel-gooder is decidedly un-nuanced. References to Skype, foodies, and gentrification are technically relevant but feel un-insightful and out-of-date. The plot twists announce themselves well in advance, and the script feels slapped together by a rookie film student.

Still—and this is a big still—the joy of watching solid actors pal around in sexy, grungy Wilhelmsburg (a suburb of Akin’s home city of Hamburg) largely takes the sting out of the weak endeavor. Akin has an uncanny knack for weaving music into a film and bringing party scenes to ecstatic life—something he should have done even more here to drown out the listless narrative.

Perhaps it’s unfair that all his work subsequent to Head-On should be compared to his 2003 masterpiece. Even the lyrical The Edge of Heaven paled slightly in its shadow, and this diversion clearly doesn’t stand a chance. My hope is that this project was more fun to make than it was to watch, freeing Akin to continue his self-described “love, death, and devil trilogy” thoroughly refreshed. Yana Litovsky
August 20, 2010