Junk Food for Thought is the review column about whatever it’s about.
The other day, I found myself rewatching “Elvis” (2022). Not because I’m a massive Elvis fan or anything, nor even because I liked the movie, but because I needed to experience Tom Hanks’s egregious performance as Colonel Tom Parker one more time.
Had Hanks not been cast in this film, I doubt I ever would have given it a second thought after leaving the theater. But he was, and he delivered one of the most disturbing, traumatizing and captivating performances since Matthew Morrison played the Grinch in 2020.
To the screenplay’s every line, Hanks bestows a tragically unconvincing accent and a stomach-churning misintonation that leaves the viewer deeply unsettled. He intrudes into scenes, poking his head between curtains or peering over railings, a malevolent interloper on a mediocre movie.
When the movie shows Elvis’s final, heartbreaking performance, the scene’s emotional resonance is abruptly undercut by a crossfade to Tom Hanks, in ghastly old-age makeup on top of his shoddy fat suit, still utterly failing to act in his character’s dying moments.
No offense to the man, but Hanks single-handedly ruined this movie. Yet, with the sheer evil potency of performance, he also saved it from being forgettable. Because of him, I rewatched “Elvis.” And as I did, I thought about a man on a horse.
Let me explain.
Ristorante Bros’ is a (somehow) Michelin-starred restaurant in Lecce, Italy that went viral in late 2021 after award-winning author Geraldine DeRuiter posted a negative review of it on her blog, the Everywhereist.
Well, “negative review” might be an understatement. In it, DeRuiter compares her 27-course meal at Bros’ to “a statue of a bear, chiseled into marble centuries ago, by someone who had never actually seen a bear” and a piece of dinner theater in which “dinner was not involved.”
Her experience of the restaurant was marked by miniscule proportions, off-putting flavor palates, callous disregard for allergies and “rancido” ricotta. The pièce de résistance, presumably a twisted play on the phrase “chef’s kiss,” was “Limoniamo Floriano,” a plaster cast of the chef’s mouth, filled with vaguely salivary citrus foam which the diners were instructed to lick out.
The visceral horror of the situation is palpable beneath DeRuiter’s witty writing. Reading “We Eat at The Worst Michelin Starred Restaurant, Ever,” one can’t help but imagine how it would feel to place their lips on Chef Floriano Pellegrino’s and slurp the citric slobber from his mouth…
I think it’s that horrific element which made the review so popular. And it’s that popularity which caught the attention of Chef Floriano himself.
In response to DeRuiter, whom he refers to as “Mrs. XXX” on account of having forgotten her name, Chef Floriano wrote a three-page “Declaration,” which begins with a simple drawing of a man on a horse.
On each page of the manifesto, he includes a new representation of this same subject: first the simple line drawing, then Jacques-Louis David’s “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” and finally, a somewhat menacing abstract called “Trophies and Sycophants” by Misheck Masamvu.
He states that creating a basic sketch of a man on a horse is “not that hard, but most people will admire you” for it. Likewise, painting a masterful portrait of a man on a horse, like “Napoleon Crossing the Alps,” may be “impressive,” but it’s also “shallow.”
“What is art?” he writes. “What if food?”
At Bros’, Chef Floriano seeks to answer these questions with his own vision of an “avant-garde” culinary experience, akin to the third, abstract painting based on the essence of a horse. The Limoniamist sees the purpose of food, and of art in general, as pushing boundaries and introducing new sensations, regardless of if they’re beautiful or even remotely pleasant.
It’s this same “third-man-on-a-horse” principle that underlies my fascination with Tom Hanks’s performance in “Elvis.” Every time the “Forrest Gump” star talks about “snow jobs” and “Santy Claus” in his garbled, ostensibly Dutch accent, I feel like DeRuiter must have when she smooched the chefly ramekin.
It was undoubtedly a terrible movie, just like DeRuiter’s was undoubtedly a terrible meal. But you can’t deny that both were unforgettable, just like Matthew Morrison’s Grinch, or Tom Hooper’s “Cats” movie.
The third-man-on-a-horse approach may not make for good art, per se, but in the end, it produces the stories that stick with you.
★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Photo courtesy of the Everywhereist
