Hannah Watched a Movie

Hannah Jackson is a sophomore student at Oswego East High School.  Getting ready for her trip to France next year, Hannah has been watching movies, reading books, and doing tons and tons of research.  She’s always wanted to travel the world,  so now that she’s got her chance, she’s going to make sure she gets the most out of the experience by being prepared beforehand. 

Below is Hannah’s review of “The Hundred Foot Journey,” a modern movie about life in France and clash of cultures.  If you’re a member of TAP and would like to publish your work here, just let the TAP teachers know.  

The Hundred Foot Journey is a movie that takes place in France in modern times about a feud between two restaurants that are across from each other in a small French town: one operated by a recently relocated Indian family with Indian cuisine and the other a Michelin-starred French restaurant. The Indian family restaurant’s goal was to spread their culture through their cooking to the French countryside, and in the process becoming a well known restaurant. The popular French restaurant of many years, run by Madame Mallory, strives for the 2 star restaurant status while strictly preparing traditional French dishes. The two restaurants compete for business until the family’s second-eldest son, their head chef, begins to work for Madame Mallory and starts to incorporate Indian spices into the French dishes and makes them better. The restaurants then work together for a common goal: making the best dishes and spreading their cultures. The movie shows much of the beautiful French countryside as well as giving insight to the French culture and its food delicacies. The collision of the two distinct cultures built off each other in the movie to give even more light to the true cultures as they combined into one.

I truly enjoyed this movie as I love cooking and eating food, and that was the main focus of the movie. It got me excited for all the new and different foods we will get the chance to try on our trip. I also loved how the plot built up to the two cultures coming together. It was very interesting to learn about both cultures and to see them assimilate into one. The scenes in the movie were very beautiful, showing the French countryside, and it illustrated what France is like and what life there is like.

I learned a lot from this movie that will better my experience on this trip. First of all I learned a lot about French food, restaurants, life, small towns and the French countryside. The French culture was illustrated very nicely in this movie by taking place there. I learned a bit about the French language because it was spoken frequently throughout the movie in short phrases like “thank you” and “hello.” Most of all, as the movie continued to combine two different cultures into one, I learned a lot about how it will be for us traveling to another country and experiencing a new culture. The movie demonstrated how simple it is to assimilate to a new culture and how to make a better experience by combining your culture with the new one. This message from the movie is great to learn while traveling and experiencing new cultures.