‘Can’t-miss’/award-winning documentary on Northern Italy’s truffle trade doesn’t exactly miss, merely underwhelms. Between nosing dogs, sweetly eccentric aging owners, retail middlemen & restaurant purveyors, fungi assayers & connoisseurs, writer/director/lensers Michael Dweck & Gregory Kershaw dig up plenty of photo-friendly material, but never find an organizing principle to set their gems in. Everything given more or less equal weight other than the dogs who suffer a double indignity: not only acting but also as unpaid camera operators! (Attached POV ‘Go-Pro’ collars?) Where’s the canine union when you need it? Still a fun watch, but this ought to have been better. Stick it out and you’ll be rewarded with the best shot in the pic as a stubborn old owner sneaks out for some nighttime foraging urged along by the panting anticipation of his eager partner.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: That funky/earthy truffle odor something of an acquired, and very expensive, taste. Hence, truffle oil, an item most great chefs studiously avoid.
No comments:
Post a Comment