Are you hungry’? The Thai film that has conquered the top of Netflix confirms a curious trend

In the week in which Netflix has released the spin-off of ‘The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die’ and the Spanish film based on the true story of the Hepta Group ‘Phenomena’, a Thai film has sneaked into the top of Netflix movies by surprise.

‘Hunger’directed by Sitisiri Mongkolsiri and scripted by Kongdej Jaturanrasamee, has swept the platform since it premiered on April 8, strengthening the upward trend in film and television series and films about the world of cooking. In 2022, ‘The Menu’, the film starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult and Ralph Fiennes, and ‘The Bear’, the Disney+ series that was the big surprise of the year, conquered the screens. Without forgetting ‘Hierve’ (Boiling Point’), a 90-minute sequence shot about the stress of a professional kitchen. 2023 has begun with ‘Makinai: The Maiko Cook’, the Japanese series that will be the best on Netflix in 2023 and nobody is watching and now he continues with the fashion for culinary films with this ‘Hunger’, confirming that food also enters our eyes.

‘Hunger’ tells us the story of twenty-something Aoy (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying. And I thought Schwarzenegger was complicated), who runs a family-owned stir-fried noodle restaurant in Bangkok’s old town. One fine day, she receives an invitation to leave the business and go into ‘Hunger’, the most select team of luxury chefs in Thailanddirected by Paul (Nopachai Chaiyanam), a cook as brilliant as he is obnoxious.

Aoy will fight for the dream of being a renowned chef as if it were a ‘Master Chef’ or ‘Celebrity Bake Off’, going from the street kitchen of her traditional noodle stand in a working-class neighborhood to the haute cuisine of a restaurant in luxury, With everything it implies. The pressure, the perfectionism, the discipline, the lack of labor inspectors… When we say everything, it is everything.

And it is that delighting ourselves with food on the screen is fine, but it seems that what the audience really likes is this unhealthy competition for wanting to outdo oneself and others no matter what is sacrificed along the way.either physically or psychologically. Stories of almost superhuman overcoming in the style of ‘Whiplash’, the film that catapulted Damien Chazelle to fame and which won JK Simmons the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as the rigorous and controversial music teacher Terence Fletcher. The end justifies the means, whatever they may be.

‘Hunger’ has a lot of this, but up to a certain point. Aoy’s morals and values ​​have a limitand when these are exceeded, he does not hesitate to change scenery in search of taking advantage of and exploiting his talent in other environments, although without ever losing the ambition to fight for his dream.

In a certain way, the Netflix film follows another of the cinema trends of recent years, which is mocking upper-class snobbers and their posturing eccentricitiesas do the winner of the Plama d’Or at Cannes ‘El Triángulo de la Tristeza’ or the previously mentioned ‘El menú’.