Fantasia 2010: THE NAKED KITCHEN Review

[Our thanks to Lauren Baggett for the following review.]

If Hollywood churned out a remake of Korean romantic comedy The Naked Kitchen, they wouldn't need to make it blander.  It's a shame, because the film's set-up could easily deliver another quirky crowdpleaser. Our heroine Mo-rae, sporting an Amelie haircut and an unbelievably twee parasol shop, breaks into an art gallery in search of an anniversary present for her husband and winds up in an abrupt tryst with a young photography buff. At dinner that night, her husband tops her confession of cheating with one of his own; he quit his financing job in order to pursue his lifelong dream of opening a restaurant. As a full-time mentor, he's bringing in one Park Du-Re (Antique's dreamy Ju Ji-Hun), a young French-Korean phenom.  Anyone who can't guess that the sexy photographer and the live-in cooking teacher are one and the same obviously needs a crash course in wacky cinematic coincidences. Mo-Rae reacts both with horror and an inability to tell her ever-patient husband that the man who cuckolded him now lives with them. Du-Re, for his part, seems content in bonding with both husband and wife.  He ingratiates himself into their daily routines with the confidence that only handsome young chefs who moonlight as photographers can generate.

What results is the most saccharine film about infidelity I can remember seeing. Accompanied by a sickly sweet fairytale soundtrack, The Naked Kitchen can't quite commit to what it wants to be. Du-Re doesn't seem to be doing an awful lot of teaching, since he and husband Sang-in spend more time posing with vegetables than actually cooking. No sumptuous visual feasts of culinary delights are on display here; for that, you'll have to check out the Le Grand Chef sequel that's also playing the festival. As for the romantic comedy side of the equation, the film is so committed to its lazy pacing that it's hard for the audience to believe that Mo-Rae is feeling any conflict over her two suitors whatsoever.

As Mo-Rae, Shin Min-a relies a bit too heavily on tilting her cutely coiffed head and mugging for the camera.  She never gains the uniqueness that would make her stand out from the pack of similarly mugging romantic heroines. As Du-re, Ji-Hun displays ample chemistry with both husband and wife, which leads me to wonder why these films never end in amicable polyamory. Instead, the plot lurches from its pleasant hour and a half of cruise control into dramatic overdrive, a tonal shift that the film doesn't earn.  This leaves the audience with a film that is perfectly watchable, but pales in comparison to the cheekier, smarter examples of romance films that Korea can produce.

Review by Lauren Baggett