Cuoco contadino (2004)

A car is heading up towards the Prealps through the hills between Liguria and France. Paolo Masieri, one of the most innovative Italian chefs, has his vegetable garden there, his country house and his herbs. The camera follows him, moving amongst the twigs like a weasel, smelling the moss and the dry chestnut leaves. Paolo drives along the seafront before he meets the morning fishermen, gets the kitchen ready, tells his assistants what they have to do, coordinates the work with Barbara, the wife with whom he runs the restaurant at Sanremo. Words are distilled, everything else is the sound of life, hands deriving nutrition from things. Paolo cuts and restores, breaks and recomposes. He is both magician and wizard, master of a quiet sort of magic that breathes with the surroundings. This is the only way that the amber light that reddens the hills can explode and transform those who eat it in the form of food. This is Paolo's miracle: feeding oneself from life to be able to feed, to be able to disappear in everything one has ever belonged to since birth.