(courtesy Alliance Francaise French Film Festival)
Having your world upended is not always the best of outcomes.
But when it results in life getting way better, and in defiance of every expectation you may have held to that point, then rather than collapsing in good old sack cloth and ashes (trust us, it’s a Biblical thing) and wailing your heart out, you can life up your head, look around you and smile at all the good things lying right there in front of you.
That’s precisely what happens to the characters in All Stirred Up! (Tous toqués!), a Canadian film that (not always completely successfully) mixes together the rom-com and the family comedy – the latter works far better than the former – and serves up a fairytale story of a whole lot of unhappiness giving way new and positive steps forward because the right people end together at the right time.
You might be forgiven though for wondering if it’s all going to end up sunshine and roses at the start.
All Stirred Up! (Tous toqués!) begins with French chef Victor (Edouard Baer) who’s working in a New York City restaurant to be closer to his estranged daughter Gaëlle (Lélia Nevert) in Quebec – why he’s in that U.S. city at a far lower rank that he’s risen to in France isn’t clear but it does give him lots of reason to cross the border into Canada which is crucial to the plot – trying to get through Canadian customs with a whole lot of food that he intends to use to win his only child back over after a lifetime of emotional neglect.
His plan to reunite his fractured family through food comes a-cropper though when super zealous customs official, Sonia (Julie LeBreton), who’s extreme dedication to her job has its root in a traumatic incident revealed later in the film, confiscates his food and knives and he drives back into the U.S. surging with fury.
As meet-cutes go, it’s got the “meet” part down pat; not so much the “cute” part.
But through a few handy plot contrivances, and All Stirred Up! (Tous toqués!) has more than a few of them, Victor ends up coaching Sonia’s daughter Lili-Beth (Élodie Fontaine) for a province-wide school cooking competition (Masterchef for kids on steroids) which she wants to win, despite having no inclination for the culinary arts before, because … who knows really other than she wants to stick to all the kids at school who hate her.
And why, you ask, do so many of her classmates detest this cute sweet kid who has the face of a child contracted to sell breakfast cereal to adults?
One key part of the plot of All Stirred Up! (Tous toqués!) is that Sonia is hated throughout the small village in which she lives by everyone because she has, at one time or another, ruined their plans by making their lives impossibly difficult at the border.
She is enemy number one, and dear sweet Lili-Beth is social collateral damage.
Sonia does have some friends including Sami (Oussama Fares) and his wife Aya (Douaa Kachache), who operate Sonia’s father’s old restaurant – he has dementia and is used for comedy more than anything though later on he becomes more of a grandfather figure to Lili-Beth and some Chanticleer chickens – and supermarket owner Ludger (Sylvain Michel) but by and large she is persona non grata and no one is interested in supplying the food Victor to help Lili-Beth cook her way to social acceptance.
But then the dish she’s chosen to cook because a sensation at Sami and Aya’s restaurant and suddenly the village who once spurned Sonia and Lili-Beth, and by extension, Victor, suddenly rally and become arcdent supporters of the young girl’s quest for culinary glory.
Now before you go “awwww” and sigh with wonder at the ways terrible things can turn around for good, it’s worth noting that for the most part the village do this because Lili-Beth is now a viral sensation and they want to ride her gravy train to local produce adulation.
So, yeah, not exactly all warm and fuzzy and altruistic community loveliness.
But All Stirred Up! (Tous toqués!) chooses to parlay this as something selfless and wonder-filled, and while it is for those at the centre of the story, the rest of the village just look like greedy, grasping hangers-on.
Still, at least they are all backing Sonia and Lili-Beth rather than bashing the car they drive so … progress?
Whatever the outcome of Lili-Beth’s success, which is all goofy characters and quirky village carrying on and a gorgeously father-daughter vibe between Victor and Lili-Beth, the second and less successful stream of All Stirred Up! (Tous toqués!) is that Victor and Sonia are supposedly falling in love while all this transformational life stuff is going on.
The reason why is doesn’t quite work is because it’s not really addressed in any meaningful way throughout the film; in fact, it’s almost as if that’s supposed to be something that happens in a film like this, and so, even though their chemistry is near to non-existent, Victor and Sonia get together at the end (not a spoiler; pay attention and you’ll see it’s all headed there even if it is perfunctorily done).
Still, while it feels like a trope shoehorned by writer-director Manon Briand just because, it doesn’t lessen the uplifting fizz and joy of All Stirred Up! (Tous toqués!) which turns out to be quite the little delightful gem by the end.
However awkwardly some of the parts fit together, All Stirred Up! (Tous toqués!) ends up being the sort of soul-stirring, heart-filling film that this current blighted age needs, where relationships heal, bruised souls get a chance to live again and stymied dreams of all kinds live again.
It’s a gloriously lovely, effervescently wondrous shot in the arm, and it leaves you feeling happy that however dark life may get, then and now, that sometimes it surprises you and some quite lovely things can happen, reshaping lives for the better and making one small corner of Canada at least at socially bucolic as its rustically agrarian surrounds.