SHORT TAKES #08 late spring

The best new-to-me films. First thoughts on Banh Anh-em, Maison Passarelle, and more.

soup service at Maison Passarelle

I'm in Europe—but not at Cannes (I'm keeping tabs on the festival through everyone I know here. The American movies are highly anticipated this year, not usually the case).

I'm in Italy on a long-overdue honeymoon. More to come, but for your own taste of the region, pick up a copy of Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan and check out MARCELLA, the new documentary about the patron saint of Italian cuisine, directed by Peter Miller (who also made a short film on the egg cream, among other gems). I moderated a panel for its New York premiere last week. It's a lovely, no-frills doc that avoids sentimentality and, while whetting your appetite, never tips into food porn. Its straightforward approach, in my opinion, is something Marcella herself would have appreciated.

I can’t say the same for NONNAS. I managed to endure 15 minutes of this Netflix movie, based on a Staten Island restaurateur—still 13.5 minutes longer than I lasted with the streamer’s adaptation of The Leopard, utterly unwatchable. As penance, I popped in the Blu-ray of Visconti’s version to cleanse the palate. We’ll see how Palermo stacks up to its cinematic legacy.

In the mean time: The best new-to-me films I watched last month, along with a more critical survey of what I ate.

BEST FIRST VIEWINGS

• HIGH ART (Lisa Cholodenko, 1998 ): Not currently streaming, which feels appropriate: this is a movie best encountered by accident, ideally at 4p.m. in a sparsely attended downtown revival theater that smells faintly of mildew and popcorn oil. The meet-cute involves broken plumbing, because in the movies a queer women cannot simply meet at a coffee shop (see: Bound). Radha Mitchell is baby-faced and twitchy in the way of actresses pretending not to be beautiful. Ally Sheedy wears a tank top with the authority of someone who’s been through things. There’s a kind of ambient mildew here too, but it’s art-directed.

• CARRIE (Brian De Palma, 1976): Watched because my mother forbade me to for ages. The scariest part is ironically the mother, played by aka Piper Laurie aka Catherine Martell.

• JUNGLE FEVER (Spike Lee, 1991): Watched partly in preparation for Lee’s upcoming remake of High and Low and partly to feed my growing obsession with movies that depict architects as actual people.

• INDISCREET (Stanley Donen, 1958): This Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant reunion post-Notorious (1946) features a very competent romcom set up that hinges on deception but floats like champagne. Donen always brings his game when it comes to set design. They’re ideal movies for parties. I want to color-coordinate my throw pillows and picture frames now. h/t to

  Veronica Fitzpatrick
  for this one.

one great and and one terrible banh mi at Banh Anh-em

THINGS I ATE

• A family friend is working at Marea, where the seafood is as elegant and refined as the art on the walls is hideous and the dining room oddly tacky. Still, the deconstructed tiramisu earns a spot on NYC’s dessert Mount Rushmore: mascarpone cream, espresso sabayon, and cookie crumbles are sculpted into a coffee bean, with a scoop of mascarpone gelato on the side. Better, much better, than the classic.

• Some of the city’s best biscuits are found at this coffee shop in Bushwick.