Women's Film Festival presents 'A Fine Line,' by Joanna James

If you ask most people about their earliest food memory, the answer probably includes their mother or grandmother and a home-cooked meal. It seems almost ludicrous, then, that an art form so thoroughly practiced by women is dominated by men at the professional level.

Overlooked, undercooked

The film’s opening sequence presents a lineup of celebrity chefs, ranging from Boston restauranteur Barbara Lynch to Eataly co-founder Lidia Bastianich. However, it quickly shifts to the story of Greek-American chef/restaurant owner (and the director’s mother) Valerie James, who becomes the film’s focus. Interspersed with interview sound bites from the celebrity chefs, the film paints an intimate portrait of life inside a family of European immigrant restauranteurs.

However, James’s focus on her mother detracts from her film’s overall effectiveness. Although it shows Val’s perseverance in raising her family amid mounting debt and the struggle of owning a business as a single mom, the film’s most poignant scenes highlight those better-known chefs.

Val appears to be well liked in her community, but what is the greater context for her story? We never get a clear sense of why we should care about her. Is the filmmaker’s intent to show, through her mother, the universality of a female chef’s struggle? This concept might have worked if she better integrated the celebrity-chef interviews into her mother’s story. That said, it seems like a stretch to put her on the same level as three-Michelin-star chef Elena Arzak and Iron Chef Cat Cora.

My guess is that James started shooting a film about Val’s restaurant and, after realizing the concept’s limited potential for distribution, decided to go in another direction midway through production. There are endless kernels of wisdom given by celebrity chefs, but it mostly feels like we’re watching two separate films.

Also, given the content imbalance favoring Val’s story, those other professionals are greatly underutilized. Ultimately, A Fine Line does not deliver the premise of the film as marketed.

Limited voices

There is also very little attention paid to women chefs of color, despite their large demographic presence within the industry. The sole exception is the inclusion of Mashama Bailey in an introductory montage. An African-American executive chef whose restaurant, The Grey, used to house a segregated Greyhound bus station, Bailey does not make another appearance in the film until almost 40 minutes later, and even then is only featured in a brief talking-head segment.

Still, given the omnipresence of restaurants in our lives, it is a film worth seeing — if only to extrapolate to a more complex reality regarding the plight of women in food service. The restaurant industry is one of the most egregious harborers of workplace sexism, and as we collectively push for social justice in all spaces, this is an important subject with which to engage.

Presented by the Women’s Film Festival. The $35 ticket includes admission to the film and dinner at Chima Brazilian Steakhouse with a choice of salmon, boneless chicken, or sirloin steak and a salad bar. Must book in advance.