We love a good kitchen drama, don’t we? There’s something about the relentless, high-pressure quest for perfection, the chaos and conflict behind the scenes, and don’t forget all that fantastic food. Just recently we had genre-bending thriller The Menu on our screens, plus anxiety-inducing dramedy series The Bear, and now for the next course: the new Thai drama Hunger is screening exclusively on Netflix.
Directed by Sitisiri “Dom” Mongkolsiri, Hunger focuses on Aoy (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying, familiar from the excellent 2017 drama Bad Genius) a cooking prodigy who is “discovered” while running her family’s struggling noodle shop. Invited to try out for a position at the prestigious, high-end kitchen Hunger, which specialises in crafting unique menus for wealthy clients, she comes under the tutelage of the imperious, manipulative Chef Paul (Nopachai Chayanam), one of the leading lights of the Bangkok culinary scene. But Paul demands nothing less than complete excellence from his staff, and the pressure to meet his expectations is soul-destroying.
Outside of the foodie realm, Hunger has strong parallels with Damien Chazelle’s breakthrough picture Whiplash, which saw Miles Teller’s musical prodigy butt heads with J.K. Simmons’ demonic jazz conductor. That toxic mentor/mentee relationship is echoed in the dynamic between Aoy and Paul, as she struggles to reconcile her own values with the pitiless demands of Michelin-level food service.
Director Mongkolsiri, who called the shots on a few episodes of high school horror series Girl from Nowhere, shoots the proceedings like a horror movie, delighting in framing the dining scenes like a cannibal orgy and highlighting the class issues inherent in the very concept of fine dining, making this one yet another in the recent spate of “eat the rich” genre outings. We’re always hungry for more of that, so we’ll be RSVPing for Hunger. Shall we save you a seat?
