La Réparation ★★

Just like a gourmet meal, a good film can take time to be ready. Take too much time, however, and it will lose its flavor. Or be somewhat overlooked. This seems to be the case with Régis Wargnier‘s entry to TIFF Romania. The Transylvanian film festival shows the French director’s first feature in ten years in its “Film Food” sidebar, reserved for works related to the culinary. It seems a bit of a stopgap for a drama with higher ambitions than a foodie film but a rather muddled flavor profile. Teen romance and travelogue, mystery and (possible) murder plot, family drama, and working professional portrait come together in this convoluted cinematic concoction.

Famed chef Paskal Jankovski (Clovis Cornillac) commands both his daughter Clara (Julia de Nunez) and kitchen brigade, demanding total devotion to his culinary career dream: a Michelin star. His highly talented sous-chef Antoine (Julien de Saint-Jean) instead devotes himself to Clara, who plans to run off with him. On a lonely walk, a discussion between the two men about Clara escalates. Two years later, both Pascal and Antoine are still missing. A trace of flavors and cooking style leads Clara – and also media and police – to Taiwan, where she hopes to find her lost lover and the truth about her father’s fate. Legacy, loss, and love create an emotional pressure cooker about to boil over.

Poised between continents, cuisines, and cross-cultural drifts, the high-strung story stumbles under the weight of its own intentions. Wargnier himself almost gets lost in the maze of male rivalry, mystery, and romantic, as well as careerist, obsession. There’s no shortage of original ideas and relevant themes, but the director-writer disregards them for the sake of borderline soapy melodrama and a crime mystery given away in the first chapter. As the sole woman in a professional and narrative men’s world, Clara is treated as a professional tool and trophy by the men around her. Rather than critically reflecting on these chauvinist tendencies in the haute cuisine, the story reaffirms them. 

The most obvious example is Clara being defined as professionally educated and trained by her father who, in turn, just like Antoine, is a self-taught genius. Nevertheless, the glossy visuals deliver splendid sceneries, local contrasts, and some dreamy, almost mystical shifts into the symbolic unconscious. Renaud Chassaing’s cinematography is meticulous, tactile, and lush. Yet, this stylistic indulgence comes at a cost. Themes of inheritance and identity, guilt and reconciliation, are introduced but not meaningfully explored. Instead, the film constantly shifts tone. Dialogue often rings expository and clunky, and the pacing is inconsistent, especially in the second half, where revelations feel forced and emotionally underdeveloped.

Julia de Nunez anchors the film as Clara, though the script offers her little more than a trail of breadcrumbs and elliptical conversations. Clovis Cornillac lends gravitas to the missing patriarch, though his presence is underutilized. Set between Brittany’s storm-lashed cliffs and Taipei’s luminous sprawl, La Réparation promises introspective drama and transnational mystery. While it certainly shows aesthetic sophistication, the story underneath the polished surface is too fragmented to resonate and too self-conscious to flow. Artifice replaces intimacy; melodrama stifles authenticity. What remains is an elegant, visually elevated, narratively elusive experience: a costly cinematic dinner that looks expensive but might leave one hungry for substance.