Film No. 10 (2016) Noma: My Perfect Storm February 8th.

Film No. 10 (2016) February 8th.  6.30 PM LUNA Paradiso, Northbridge. 

"As a cook you're creating a language, an alphabet to create sentences, the ingredients are our alphabet and the more letters we have, the more beautiful the prose" (The master chef Rene Redzepi discusses just one philosophy behind his Copenhagen based restaurant Noma).

There is no doubt that the phenomenon known as Noma, the thoroughly unique restaurant created by Rene Redzepi makes for an interesting story.

The thing is, the way this feature documentary is told, at 95 minutes it all begins to wear a little thin. The story behind Redzepi's creation, a stone walled restaurant in the harbour side heart of Copenhagen is unique and the fact his creation has been named Best Restaurant in the World four times in 5 years since 2010 is intriguing. I'd much prefer however to have stumbled across this story told as a 40 minute profile on a pay TV food channel.

Perhaps I'm being somewhat harsh; a documentary told in a less muddled way may have captured my attention more readily. There was a self indulgent spine to Noma: My Perfect Storm, as though the very self confident Redzepi had a major say in how the ingredients of this tale should be mixed and marinated. So much so that his go-pro became the go to camera shot as we listened to him tell us how little he cared about being the son of an immigrant but ultimately how much he wanted to prove people wrong; although I was never quite sure who the people were and exactly what needed to be proved.

Generally the successful recipe for a good documentary infuses tension into key moments of its story. Rene, playing a poor man's Gordon Ramsey as he lectured two of his underlings about never settling for an inferior herb, verged on cliche. Then there was the lead up to the 2014 announcement of world's best restaurant after failing to attain a third Michelin star and coming second (WBR) in 2013. That outcome was telegraphed earlier in the film.  All in all if this documentary was a sponge cake, you might be asking why it never rose. 6GUMS.