Job par Alexis Lebrun October 10, 2022
Definitely, the restaurant industry is celebrating in fiction. After the incredible film The Chef (Philip Barantini) released at the beginning of the year, here comes the big surprise in France of a serial comeback crushed by blockbusters. And unlike the latter, The Bear can really claim the title of best series of 2022.
In his juice
It is one of the emblems of the city of Chicago, and it is one of the stars of the series The Bear, so much so that it is experiencing a resurgence in popularity. He is the famous sandwich Italian Beef, a culinary specialty almost a century old. And the best addresses that serve it in the windy city are not messing around with the preparation of this specialty. This is the case of the fictional restaurant of The Bear, « The Original Beef of Chicagoland »a local institution located in a popular district of Chicago, but logically in great difficulty since its owner decided to commit suicide.
It is in this downright depressing context that his bereaved brother Carmen arrives, a starred chef accustomed to the luxury of New York’s great restaurants, but who returns home to try to save this family business on the brink, riddled with debt, where the hygiene inspection is likely to cause a panic attack, and where everything threatens to explode in your face, from the toilets to the vintage arcade machine to the local traffic. Not frightened by this nightmare in the kitchen, the boy rolls up his sleeves and has the advantage of knowing his scales. But he would like to modernize the place a little – literally in its own juice – and that’s where it gets stuck: he comes up once morest the hostility of the employees, who have always been used to running the place in their own way.
Gunshot
The meeting produces sparks, and this is precisely what makes the salt of The Bear : the series immerses us in the boiling bath of an old-fashioned kitchen, where the tension is maximum. The characters yell at each other, shout at each other and confuse each other over every detail of each dish in the middle of a “shotgun”, this very stressful moment of preparation which precedes rush hour in a restaurant.
Filmed with a hand-held camera, as close as possible to the faces and gestures of the chefs – here, everyone is entitled to this title – and supported by editing as precise as the recipe forItalian Beef, The Bear shows like no other series behind the scenes of the restoration, in a suffocating register that leaves almost no respite (the series only lasts four hours in total), a rarity in the current serial landscape where the tendency is to draw more in addition to the line. This feeling is reinforced by the flow and the authenticity of the dialogues, wonderfully written and/or improvised by interpreters who give themselves without counting, and which we quickly understand that they took serious cooking lessons before starting the shooting. .
A deserved hype
This is obviously the case of Jeremy Allen White (Shameless), the main actor of the series, impressive in the role of this somewhat lost chef who drowns in work to try to flee the demons linked to the death of his brother Michael, who bequeathed the restaurant to him and who is played by one hell of a guest, Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead). Michael’s former best friend and hottest member of the squad is played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach and his menacing physique (Girls, The Punisher), inevitable at the moment on Disney+ since following The Dropouthe is also featured in the series Star Wars Andor.
And in the role of the talented and ambitious new recruit, Ayo Edebiri (Dickinson) also makes a strong impression. But this is of course made possible by the finesse of the writing of all the characters in this cuisine, made very endearing by the diversity of their flaws – depression, toxic management, burn-out, addictions, mourning, suffocating model of masculinity – and who, despite the conflicts, form a family maintaining a vital social bond, in a city of Chicago nibbled by gentrification, but to whom the series pays a vibrant tribute.
We owe this success to the talent of Christopher Storer – already at work on the brilliant series Framework (STARZPLAY) –, creator, writer and director of most episodes of The Bear – including the incredible episode 7 and its sequence shot –, in the company of Joanna Calo, defector from BoJack Horseman (Netflix). To top it all off, the series is a delight for the ears thanks to its very inspired rock soundtrack, and the work done on the sound mixing of the cooking noises and the photography of the prepared foods is also something to make your mouth water. And you’re not done being hungry in front The Bearsince thanks to the hype surrounding it since its release in the United States, it has already been renewed for a second season.
The Bear episodes 1 to 8 on Disney+, available with CANAL+.
