The Hundred-Foot Journey
Short description
The Hundred-Foot Journey follows the Kadam family, who leave India and settle in a small village in the south of France, where they open an Indian restaurant. Their new home sits directly across the street from Le Saule Pleureur, a celebrated establishment run by Madame Mallory, whose pride rests on its Michelin star. What begins as a bitter rivalry between two very different kitchens gradually shifts once Mallory recognizes the rare talent of the family's young cook, Hassan.
Lasse Hallström directed the film, the sixteenth of the twenty features listed in his career, arriving between Safe Haven and A Dog's Purpose. Steven Knight wrote the screenplay, and Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey produced. Helen Mirren plays Madame Mallory, with Manish Dayal as Hassan, Om Puri as his father, Charlotte Le Bon as Marguerite, and Juhi Chawla Mehta as Hassan's mother. The production brought together American, Indian and Emirati companies.
Made for about 22 million dollars, the film earned roughly 89 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.3 from around 91,000 votes, the same average as on TMDB from a much smaller base, while a critics' score of 6.3 from 142 reviews places it below both audience figures.
What's left behind the scenes
- When Hassan makes an omelet for Madame Mallory in the film, he uses a recipe that the father of Manish Dayal, the actor playing Hassan, used to make omelets for his son.
- Every weekend during filming, actor Om Puri invited his colleagues home and treated them to traditional Indian dishes. At these dinners, all the actors became close friends, which made the relationships of their characters more natural.
- An ideal location for filming the exterior of ‘Weeping Willow’ was a small rural house in the countryside near a country road, an elegant 19th-century building hidden behind massive hedges. The building, in a bourgeois architectural style called La Duranti, was built at the turn of the century by two sisters. The building’s interiors were used to film scenes in Madame Mallory’s bedroom, as well as scenes in the restaurant itself (the ‘Weeping Willow’ kitchen was later built in a studio pavilion).
- While searching for the exterior of the ‘Mumbai Estate’ restaurant, scouts hoped to find a building near the road so that the restaurant’s surroundings could be made as similar as possible to the exterior of ‘Weeping Willow’. A large unoccupied house was found in the town of Carlus, with a population of only 650. The town was ten kilometers from Saint-Antonin. Unfortunately, the house was far from the road, but the owner kindly allowed the crew to build a road and surround the building with a wall of faux stone. Moreover, the farmer even allowed the facade of ‘Weeping Willow’ to be built on the other side of the road, directly in one of his fields. Scenes taking place between the two restaurants were filmed on this road created by the filmmakers. The two-story frame of ‘Weeping Willow’ was surrounded by a massive chroma key screen. In addition, a huge crane as tall as a five-story building was used to hold the impressive lighting equipment.
- Filming in France lasted 52 days. And the crew worked for another four days in India.
- The film is based on the novel "The Hundred-Foot Journey" by Richard C. Morais.
- The film was shot in the picturesque south of France, in full accordance with the landscapes of the Southern Pyrenees as described in the script. The 'Weeping Willow' and 'Mumbai Estate' restaurants were built in the town of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val. In addition, the restaurant interiors were filmed in houses in the neighboring town of Carlus.
- Mansur, trying to persuade his father to leave the city, tells him that the restaurant opposite has a Michelin star. His father says, “I know, I’ve seen it.” He could not have seen it, as Michelin Guide policy dictates that a customer can only learn about the number of stars from the guide itself, and if this rule is disregarded, the company reserves the right to exclude the restaurant from the ranking.
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