“Soul Kitchen” is a lively, easygoing farce filled with high-energy music and amusing complications. It sounds like the least likely film to be written and directed by Fatih Akin. Or does it?
Akin, born in Germany to Turkish parents, is best known for way-serious films, such as the devastating “Head-On” and the somber “The Edge of Heaven.”
Though he had written this film before those two, he admits in a director’s statement that after their success, “I didn’t find ‘Soul Kitchen’ important enough.” He soon changed his mind and, aside from the desire to remind himself “that life is not only about pain and introspection,” it is easy to see why he did.
For though his tone couldn’t be more different, “Soul Kitchen” shares with Akin’s other films a fondness for offbeat characters who live life to the hilt, as well as a thematic interest in the way individuals of foreign backgrounds interact with the dominant German culture. What we’re enjoying here are his usual concerns displayed in a fooling-around mode.
The fish out of water in this film is Zinos Kazantsakis, a Greco-German who runs a restaurant in an industrial zone on the outskirts of Hamburg. As played by Adam Bousdoukos, Zinos is powered by the juices of life and knows no speed but full speed ahead.
Romance, however, is about to provide a speed bump. Zinos’ upscale girlfriend, Nadine (Pheline Roggan), is headed off for a multiyear journalism posting in Shanghai, and he would desperately like to join her. But he can’t bear to leave his restaurant, even though the food he makes never manages to rise to the level of indifferent.
Because this is a farce with endless obstacles, the people Zinos meets further complicate his life. He runs into an old childhood friend-turned- real estate entrepreneur (Wotan Wilke Möhring) and a brilliant but temperamental chef (Birol Ünel) who tells everyone he’s an artist, not a whore.
Adding yet another flavor to the mix is Zinos’ brother Illias (top German actor Moritz Bleibtreu, the star of “Run Lola Run” and “The Baader Meinhof Complex”). Illias is a con man on a prison work-release program who wants a de facto job with no responsibilities that will leave him free for his criminal pursuits.
These characters, and lots more, interact in endless ways both expected and not. “Soul Kitchen” even finds the time and space to take comic pokes at German bureaucracy, from restaurant health inspectors to tax assessment officials.
And when Zinos slips a disc trying to lift a dishwasher by himself, the film’s generous helpings of physical comedy come into play.
There is so much going on in “Soul Kitchen,” but watching all this plot actually energizes the viewing experience.
Also helping in the energy department is the film’s terrific soundtrack. Akin has put Ruth Brown, Burning Spear, Artie Shaw, the Isley Brothers and Kool & the Gang on the soundtrack, as well as generous helpings of rembetiko and Greek soul music.
“Soul Kitchen” delights in contrivance and improbability, but does so with such a big- hearted sense of fun that it is hard not to be swept away.
“soul kitchen”
Not Rated. 1 hour, 33 minutes. Starring Adam Bousdoukos, Moritz Bleibtreu, Birol Ünel, Anna Bederke and Lucas Gregorowicz; directed by Fatih Akin. Opens today at Tamarac Square Cinema.
