Gritty realism crawls into a hole and dies when confronted with Mika Kaurismaki’s Master Cheng (aka A Spice for Life), a Sino-Finnish foodie rom-com (yes, another contribution to that ubiquitous world cinema genre). This is a pre-pandemic film which has only now managed to scrape a minor UK release, although I think the big chains are missing a trick – much of it’s in English, and I would imagine that it might do very well if marketed to the right kind of audience.
The film opens with a passing coach depositing Shanghainese visitor Cheng (Chu Pak Hong) and his young son Niu Niu (Lucas Hsuan) in the small town of Pohjanjoki in remote Finland: Cheng is looking for someone called Fongtron, whom none of the locals have heard of. Not knowing what else to do, Cheng and the lad become fixtures at the local restaurant, run by divorcee Sirkka (Anna-Maija Tuokko): Cheng asks around plaintively for the mysterious Fongtron, while Niu Niu just plays on his smartphone.
Mysterious Chinese wanderers who blow into town unheralded often turn out to have the most unlikely skill set, at least in a lot of the movies that I watch, and it proves to be the case on this occasion too. However, in Cheng’s case his unexpected proficiency proves to be with a skillet – a coachload of Chinese tourists arrives and is somewhat appalled by the boiled sausage, mash, and grated vegetables which are the only things on the menu. Cheng springs into action and whips up lashings of chicken noodles, revealing he was once a top chef before various family tragedies resulted in him eventually coming to Finland in search of Fongtron.
Naturally, there is some suspicion of the newcomers from the grizzled old Finns who make up most of Sirkka’s clientele. ‘It looks slimy and awful – no white heterosexual man would eat that stuff,’ declares one community figure, unpromisingly, as he surveys the product of Cheng’s culinary exertions. However, as coachload after coachload of tourists come to town just for the food, everyone reaps the benefits. Soon even the locals are enjoying Cheng’s sweet and sour reindeer recipe and he and Niu Niu are making friends with everyone around them, especially when it turns out that Chinese food proves to have mystical, near miraculous healing properties. Sirkka soon realises what a fantastic guy Cheng is to have around – and perhaps not just as an unpaid chef…
But then you probably guessed that already: the entire plot is thoroughly predictable, to the point where it almost feels like a film you’ve already seen before, so familiar is every scene. I found myself getting a bit exasperated at the slightly discursive style and languid pace employed by the director – it could certainly stand to lose ten or fifteen minutes, because it is really pushing its luck at nearly two hours in length. It is as plain as plain can be that Cheng and Sirkka are going to end up getting it on, but the film really makes a meal (if you’ll pardon the pun) of building up to this. When the film finally gets around to advancing the plot, it will more than likely already find you there waiting impatiently for it.
Some people have been known to suggest that I can be a bit hard-hearted, even cynical, about what are generally agreed to be feel-good movies. (The average feel-good movie, as I have observed in the past, is most likely to make me feel like slipping off somewhere and opening a vein.) And so you would expect something as calculatedly sweet and inoffensive as Master Cheng to give me the pip in a pretty major way. The movie is certainly so monomaniacally intent on being charming and loveable it should actually be quite annoying and sickly. There’s also the fact that it does play rather like an advert co-produced by the Finnish Tourist Board and the Institute for the Promulgation of Chinese Culture (I just made that up, as far as I know), in that the message of the film – calling it ‘subtext’ is really doing the script a favour – is that Chinese food and philosophy can really change your life for the better, and that Finland is a lovely place to visit. It’s a toss-up as to which element of the film has had more care and attention lavished on it – slavering close-ups of Cheng’s latest sweet and sour creation, or the beautiful landscape around the town. It even plays like a collection of things to do on holiday in Finland – reindeer watching, boating, going to the sauna, tango dancing – all the stereotypical Finnish pursuits get a soft-focus outing (although I admit the degree to which tango dancing is stereotypically Finnish is open to debate). Certainly all the usual gritty little inconveniences which usually accompany living in the real world – needing money, not speaking the language of the country you’re in, needing immigration papers or a work permit – are not allowed to trouble the film’s rustic idyll, at least not until they’re required in order to enable the next permutation of the plotline.
The discerning viewer will never be in any doubt as to exactly what the makers of Master Cheng are up to at any point during the film’s arguably over-generous running time. But… I have to confess that I did find it remarkably pleasant and watchable while it was on in front of me. It’s well-played, and funny, and the cast are charismatic and easy on the eye. Which isn’t to say that the slightly annoying elements of the film weren’t obvious while I was watching it; they were, but somehow the positive points of the film easily distracted me from the negative stuff. It’s just a relentlessly nice and cheerful film. As this sort of soft and undemanding of viewing, Master Cheng is the kind of thing that plays very well on Sunday night TV. It’s utterly dispensable except as comfort viewing – but we all need a bit of extra comfort these days, I suppose.