Noma My Perfect Storm

The end result is a revealing portrait of an artist wholly dedicated to his art.

Less a documentary than a glittering souvenir, but it's still a record of a legend.

I've never seen a restaurant documentary that seemed less interested in showing the joy of food.

Deschamps never ventures below the surface of Redzepi's wildly successful experiment, and while the pictures are pretty, no one judges food on appearance alone.

Combining fly-on-the-wall observations, talking heads and artistic cutaways, there is enough for everyone's tastes.

Foremost in this fly-on-the-wall report is the fascinating contradiction of Redzepi himself, whose abrasive perfectionism appears to be prompted by the prejudice he suffered in his youth after his family moved to Denmark from humble roots in Macedonia.

Ultimately this feels a bit too much like one long advertisement for the restaurant and misses an opportunity to develop a more probing thesis ...

Redzepi's creations explode with color and are highly imaginative. His dishes seem less like food and more like a series of art installations.

Any attempt to examine Redzepi's philosophy, much less interrogate the reasons for the restaurant's success (is it more than a fad or a gimmick?), is notably missing in action. In its place are pretty pictures of glistening leaves.

Unfortunately, you learn more about his struggles, and his food, in multiple episodes of Anthony Bourdain's TV series No Reservations and The Mind of a Chef than you do in the 100 mostly flaccid minutes of Noma: My Perfect Storm.

Food is not an inherently cinematic subject, being fundamentally about the sense of taste rather than that of sight. But, in its own terms, this doco isn't too bad at all.

The film forgoes narration for a naturalistic style, putting viewers in the place they're most curious about -- the kitchen.