In the Nguyen Kitchen review cooking up a heartwarming Vietnamese-French diaspora musical

"Paris is home to one of the oldest and largest Vietnamese diasporas in the world not that you could tell from mainstream French cinema. In this heartwarming feature debut, Stephane Ly-Cuong turns to the magic of the musical comedy to portray not only the dreams and the struggles of Vietnamese-French artists, but also a side of Paris seldom seen on screen."

"A hopeful performer and singer, Yvonne Nguyen (Clotilde Chevalier) can't help but dream in songs. Her candy-coloured reveries unfold like a Jacques Demy fantasy, bursting with tunes and light. In reality, however, she is stuck belting out jingles for spring rolls to indifferent supermarket customers. Without much luck getting cast in acting roles, Yvonne moves back in with her mother (Anh Tran-Nghia), who runs a restaurant in the outskirts of Paris."

"Ly-Cuong approaches these issues with a winking humour and playfulness; the song sequences are a delight, but the beautiful chemistry between Chevalier and Tran-Nghia shines even more brightly. Here, music does not exist solely on stage, or in the rehearsal room; as Yvonne and her mother bond over cooking in a moving ritual of cultural inheritance, the sounds of clanking utensils and sizzling woks harmonise into a pleasing symphony."

In the Nguyen Kitchen follows Yvonne Nguyen, a hopeful performer in Paris who dreams in songs but earns a living singing jingles and struggles to find acting work. She moves back with her mother, who runs a restaurant on the outskirts of Paris, sparking generational clashes over cultural identity. A glamorous role as Lotus Flower offers career opportunity but requires playing up clichéd Asian stereotypes, exposing casting barriers where Asian characters are interchangeable. The film blends musical-comedy sequences and playful humour with vivid visuals while centering the intimate bond between mother and daughter, where cooking rituals become a sustaining form of cultural inheritance and artistic self-discovery.

Read at www.theguardian.com