Feeding the Soul as Well as the Stomach

Every now and then an intelligent, intimate film in which food plays a crucial role catches me by surprise. In 2000, that film was Gurinder Chadha's poignant and insightful What's Cooking? The setup is simple: Four ethnically diverse families (Jewish, Latino, Vietnamese, and African American) gather to celebrate Thanksgiving in a suburb of Los Angeles. Their homes sit at the four corners of a quiet intersection. Despite the intense familial melodramas playing out in each house, when an emergency...