Fatih Akin at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2007.The Globe and Mail
In his retro-groove saturated gumbo of a film Soul Kitchen, Hamburg, Germany-based Fatih Akin departs from the heavier fare that built his rep as one of that country's most exciting young filmmakers.
While still in college, Akin turned heads with Short Sharp Shock (1998), about small-time immigrant gangsters. He put the pedal to the metal with Head-On, his fourth film and the first in a trilogy he calls Love, Death and the Devil. Head-On, which won the Berlin Film Festival's top prize in 2004, tracks the volatile relationship of an alcoholic widower and a self-destructive young woman trying to escape her conservative immigrant family. After the documentary Crossing The Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul, Akin delivered The Edge of Heaven (second in the trilogy), which won the Cannes best-screenplay prize in 2007.
In Soul Kitchen, a lovelorn Greek restaurateur (co-writer Adam Bousdoukos) hires an eccentric new chef (Birol Unel), and his floundering Hamburg bistro becomes a hot spot - until he makes his recently paroled brother (Moritz Bleibtreu) manager. Recently, Akin revealed some of the secret ingredients of Soul Kitchen, which is already a European hit.
How did soul music and exotic cuisine come together? Is the restaurant based on a real place?
The idea was to do something where music defines the rhythm, so the whole film feels like a wild DJ set. I love all kinds of music, but Hamburg is known as a soul town, so it made sense for the film. With Head-On, I started the system of writing to music, so I know what music I'm going to use to hit the emotional level the scene needs. It's also practical because we can calculate the music budget accurately. The other thing is, Adam had a restaurant [bought after he starred in Short Sharp Shock]for 10 years. At night, he would mix on two turntables and it became a club. It was the melting pot of our social life, with artists hanging around. So we wanted to put our nostalgia into a film with music.
How did you decide what to put on the menu?
After a lot of research, we discovered Aphrodite by [Chilean writer] Isabel Allende, all about food you can cook, and then, after you eat it, make love. The recipes were so interesting, so we got permission to use dishes from that book. And that's where we got the idea for the orgy scene were the chef puts too much aphrodisiac in the dessert.
Did Birol Unel need some training in chef techniques?
Well, he likes to cook and often invites me for dinner. His food tastes good, but he gets cuts on his hands and the kitchen looks like a war zone. So he was very offended when I told him: Listen, I think you need a coach. Even though he studied for a month, we had to use a hand double a few times.
Did you feel sometimes like you were making a cooking show?
My cameraman and I discovered it is very tricky to shoot food. It's like shooting action scenes, it's all about choreography and visual information. Most of the stuff you see doesn't taste great. You have to use hairspray and lots of light to make food look good. So many times we would look at rushes and the food looked muddy - you did not want to eat it. And also, in the scenes where food is being served, we had to have steam. You do one take and the food isn't steaming any more. We lost a lot of time.
Moritz Bleibtreu, who plays the brother, starred in a couple of your early films.
They were comedies, but since then he became a serious dramatic actor. I think he's even better in comedy. When I'm with Adam, people think he's Moritz - it happens a lot. They look too similar, so the only chance to get both in one film was to make them brothers. I was thinking of those Bud Spencer-Terence Hill Italian spaghetti westerns I loved in the 1970s when I was growing up.
So now that you've made a buddy comedy, what about Hollywood?
I'm trying to finish a documentary called Garbage in the Garden of Eden, about the village of my grandparents in Turkey. And I am writing something about boxing, and the third part of the trilogy, which involves a lot of research because it's a period film. We have a state-supported industry here, so we don't have studios forcing directors to do this and that; we can express ourselves the way we want. I've had some offers of interesting stuff, and maybe I'll make [a film]there for the experience, but right now I'm following a plan, so it makes sense to continue here.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Soul Kitchen opens in Toronto on Friday, Vancouver on Aug. 20, and in selected Canadian cities to follow.
Special to The Globe and Mail