Amine Adjina’s debut feature Spices and Lies is a family drama that desperately attempts to blend the personal and the political, the culinary with the comic, but ultimately serves up a movie which is – at best – half baked.
The film revolves around Mehdi (Younès Boucif), a second generation immigrant torn between his Algerian family and life as head chef in a traditional French bistro. All is well in Mehdi’s world, his dream of managing the restaurant with his red-headed French girlfriend, Léa (Clara Bretheau) seem to be set in stone and he hangs out each evening with his friends at the local bar.
But Mehdi’s French identity – symbolised by restaurant and relationship – has, up until the opening of the movie, been kept as separate as possible from his Algerian identity – represented by family and friends. This is all about to change when Léa insists on meeting Mehdi’s mother, Fatima, (played by both Malika Zerrouki as his real mother and Hiam Abbass as the stand in). The walls Mehdi has so carefully constructed between his two selves crumble, bringing about a series of emotional and cultural collisions which, unfortunately, the film never quite manages to contain.
On paper, Spices and Lies (original title: La Petite Cuisine de Mehdi) has all the ingredients for a rich exploration of identity, belonging and postcolonial tension through heartwarming drama-comedy. Adjina — a playwright by background — brings us a film that is steeped in the contradictions of contemporary France: a society that celebrates culinary excellence as a national art form while remaining ambivalent, at best, about the descendants of those it once colonised.
In the current climate — with the far right continuing to gain traction and debates about immigration dominating the media — it is both urgent and necessary for cinema to address the themes which La Petite Cuisine de Mehdi attempts to explore. Gestures toward the emotional core of these national anxieties, locating them not in parliamentary debates or campaign slogans but around a family table, are expressed through Fatima’s nostalgia for an Algeria she left behind, Mehdi’s longing for acceptance in a country that still sees him as an outsider, and Léa’s frustrated attempts at connection.
Yet for all its thematic richness, La Petite Cuisine de Mehdi falters where it matters most: in structure and tone. The script feels uneven, unsure of whether it wants to be a tender domestic comedy or a biting social critique. Key plot points feel contrived and underdeveloped, rushed and implausible, and jokes all too often fall flat. What might have been a nuanced reflection on cultural exclusion and acceptance, or even a sweet family comedy with a political undercurrent, ends up collapsing under the weight of its own contrivances.
Still, there are undeniable flashes of hope which save the film from complete ruin. Sébastien Goepfert’s cinematography beautifully captures the city of Lyon as well as familial spaces, his camera lingering over kitchens, plates, and gestures. Hiam Abbass’s performance also manages to shine through even the worst of the dialogue and most improbable of plot points.
It’s hard not to mourn the film that La Petite Cuisine de Mehdi could have been. Its themes — intergenerational trauma, postcolonial identity, and the fraught relationship between France and Algeria — remain as potent as ever. That Adjina chose to explore these through the intimate, sensory world of food is inspired. But despite the strength of its concept and performances, the film’s execution leaves a bitter aftertaste. In the end, La Petite Cuisine de Mehdi feels like a fascinating first draft of a more accomplished work to come — a film whose political heart is in the right place, but whose narrative never quite finds the rhythm to match it.
