You Might Have Missed: Bento on the big screen

At SIFF this year, I was fortunate to see two great food films: Soul Kitchen (my favorite of the festival) and The Chef at South Polar. 

In the latter, a chef cooks for a rowdy bunch of scientists at the South Pole. While not very complex in story, it was note-worthy because of its immense focus on food. It wasn't just that its characters were chefs (as in Soul Kitchen), instead the film is really about food, in my opinion, and the characters were just vehicles to help us learn more about it. Here's what I said back then:

The chef laboriously hand cuts noodles, rolls rice balls and carefully plates each person's meal, adding a drizzle of sauce. It's slow and redundant, but this tempo allows for a studied observation of the cooking.

This weekend, while researching some recipes, I came across a trailer for Nonchan Noriben. Shot in a similar in style to South Polar, it's a cute story about a mother and daughter of the starting-over genre. More importantly it's also an exhibition of food and the food culture of Japan focused on bento. Here's the trailer:

Though it's a few years old, I recommend it for anyone who enjoyed South Polar.