Sight&Sound - 05.2020

REVIEWS

May 2020 | Sight&Sound | 75

Reviewed by Trevor Johnston

A scrumptious array of cakes and pastries,

courtesy of Ottolenghi in London, is a canny

food-porn selling-point in this otherwise

dramatically half-baked fable. It follows a start-

up bakery struggling to recover from the death

of its founder on the day she was due to take

possession of the property in villagey north

Kensington. Her business partner, daughter and

estranged mother name the place after her (hence

Love Sarah), forming a cross-generational trio of

women initially out of their depth but determined

to do the best for Sarah’s long-held dream.

The set-up is perhaps just a bit too neat, with

their financial concerns soon met by grandma

Celia Imrie having a little set aside (from her

career as a high-wire artist, would you believe?) to

keep them funded. Moreover, the answer to the

big question of who is going to provide high-class

pastries to make the place commercially viable

proves to be Sarah’s old flame from her training

days, now a top chef looking for a new challenge.

In the person of Rupert Penry-Jones, he’s a mum-

friendly screen presence. It turns out that he might

possibly be the errant father of single mother

Sarah’s daughter Clarissa (Shannon Tarbet,

capably perky), and has long carried a torch for

business partner Isabella (Shelley Conn), Sarah’s

classmate before she chose to move into finance

• all of which takes neat construction to the
  point of contrivance. Meanwhile Jake Brunger’s
  script proceeds to side-step anything resembling
  dramatic intensity by resolving its issues before
  they’ve had much chance to get going.
  The blandness is all rather exasperating,
  especially since the cast are comfortable enough
  in their roles to have been tested a bit more. Still,
  Eliza Schroeder, directing her first feature, is at
  least consistent in sticking to an easygoing course


• so we see nothing of the inciting-incident fatal
  bike crash; and admittedly the late-flowering
  romance between Imrie and the always welcome
  Bill Paterson, as an eccentric inventor neighbour,
  shows that age and a few wrinkles are no barrier
  to twinkly charisma. The idea of London’s
  multicultural society providing a market for
  taste-of-home internationally inspired baking
  is smart, as the kitchen then tackles Japanese
  matcha mille crêpe cake and other exotic
  propositions. Overall though, this is decorative,
  low-stakes fluff for when you’re not in the mood
  for anything too cinematically challenging.

Love Sarah

United Kingdom/Germany 2019

Director: Eliza Schroeder

Certificate 12A 98m 6s

London, present day. Cycling to take possession of her

new shop, baker Sarah dies in an accident. This leaves

her business partner Isabella floundering, until Sarah’s

daughter Clarissa makes contact with her estranged

maternal grandmother Mimi, who agrees financial

support to open the venture. Top chef Mathew, who

trained with Sarah and Isabella (before she changed

career to finance), and was Sarah’s old flame, takes

over in the kitchen, but his fabulous creations don’t

bring in enough customers. While romance between

Isabella and Mathew complicates the working

arrangements, a change of approach to deliver taste-

of-home cakes and pastries for London’s international

residents changes the establishment’s fortunes. Mimi

reveals that she had fallen out with Sarah because

she would not support her proposed bakery, but the

enterprise’s success allows her to heal. Mathew and

Sarah get together, and Clarissa balances her dancing

ambitions with working part-time in the bakery.

Produced by

Rajita Shah

Written by

Jake Brunger

Director of

Photography

Aaron Reid

Edited by

Laura Morrod

Jim Hampton

Production Designer

Anna Papa

Music Composer

Enis Rotthoff

Sound Designer

Oliver Achatz

Costume Designer

Jeffrey Michael

Dance

Choreography

Rose Alice

©Femme Films Ltd

Production

Companies

Miraj Films

and Rainstar

Productions present

a co-production

with Neopol Film

A film by Eliza

Schroeder

Funded by

HessenFilm

und Medien

Executive Producers

Rajen Shah

Mita Shah

Axel Schroeder

Kartik Shah

Paras Mehta

Safitri Wigdagdo

James Riley

Pietro Grepi

Cast

Celia Imrie

Mimi

Shannon Tarbet

Clarissa

Shelley Conn

Isabella Friegel

Rupert Penry-Jones

Mathew

Bill Paterson

Felix

Candice Brown

Sarah

In Colour

[1.85:1]

Distributor

Parkland

Entertainment

Say it with flours: Celia Imrie

Credits and Synopsis

China, the 18th century. Among the artists who work

in the court of Qianlong Emperor are a few Jesuit

priests who are learning Chinese painting techniques.

The emperor’s second wife, Empress Ulanara,

commands the most talented of them, Jean-Denis

Attiret, to paint her portrait, in the hope that his

Western style will help her to hold her husband’s

wandering eye. Sessions between the artist and the

empress are tense, with a struggle for dominance

soon giving way to unspoken mutual attraction.

Attiret produces a ravishing portrait that blends

Eastern and Western conventions; in recognition of

both his skill and his inappropriate intimacy with

the empress, the emperor sends him away to paint

scenes of battle. Ulanara’s plan fails, however, and the

emperor finds a new female favourite in the court.

Attiret returns hardened by what he has seen on the

battlefields. The empress, rejected by her husband

and her young son alike, succumbs to madness.

Producers

Huang Tao

Timothy Mou

Lim Chin Siew

Charles de Meaux

Jean-Paul Lattes

Screenplay

Charles de Meaux

Michel Fessler

Adaptation

Mian Mian

Directors of

Photography

Dong Jinsong

Charles de Meaux

Editing

Catherine Libert

Charles de Meaux

Art Director

François-Renaud

Labarthe

Sound Recording/

Post-production/

Mixing

Bruno Ehlinger

Costume Designer

Sandra Berrebi

©Evergrande

Pictures Co. Ltd,

Anna Sanders

Films, SFDC

Production

Companies

Evergrande Pictures

Co. Ltd present

with Anna Sanders

Films, SFDC in

association with

Backup Films a film

by Charles de Meaux

Cast

Fan Bingbing

Empress Ulanara

Melvil Poupaud

Frère Jean-Denis

Attiret

Jin Shi-Jye

General Chen

Huang Jue

Emperor Qianlong

Wu Yue

Yi, 1st servant

Thibault de

Montalembert

Frère Castiglione

Féodor Atkine

Frère Paul

Guillaume Le Du

Frère Benoît

Wang Yanan

dancer

Dolby Digital

In Colour

[2.35:1]

Subtitles

Distributor

Cinefile World

English subtitles title

Lady in the Portrait

Credits and Synopsis

(a real-life figure whose largely unknown
backstory is embroidered here) is initially too
skittish to stand still for her portraitist, so this
feels like a film in which energy and eroticism
have been forcibly held back. Ulanara gets pins
and needles; the equivalent for the viewer is
the numb prickle of potential unfulfilled.