Patisserie Coin de rue

Winner of the East Meets West Award at Santa Barbara, HD-shot pic has a decent shot at offshore arthouse and niche home-format release.

“Patisserie Coin de rue” follows the path of foodie crowdpleasers from “Babette’s Feast” to “Waitress” in mixing mouth-watering culinary displays with accessible seriocomedy. This latest from director/co-scenarist Yoshihiro Fukagawa (“Peeping Tom,” “Into the White Night”) springs few surprises in its tale of behind-the-scenes tensions at a Tokyo shop specializing in high-end French pastries. But it offers the same satisfying course of modest drama and vicarious high calories that has floated many a prior specialty hit. Winner of the East Meets West Award at Santa Barbara, HD-shot pic has a decent shot at offshore arthouse and niche home-format release.

The usual intense work routine at the titular Tokyo establishment, located in a charming Western-style house in a quiet outlying neighborhood, is disrupted one day by the arrival of Natsume (Yu Aoi). The country girl insists on seeing her fiance, only to be told he no longer works there; she turns hysterical and accuses the staff of lying, then begs for a job, insisting she can’t return home until she’s found him.

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Having grown up working in her parents’ small-town cake shop, Natsume whips up an audition dish, only to be told her skills are best suited for an ordinary cafe or some other, less discriminating venue. This induces a further fit of pique — Natsume’s emotions are like xylophone arpeggios, forever hammering up and down — but upon tasting one of the inhouse specialities, she suddenly sees the light, now begging to be taken on as an apprentice.

Paris-trained chef/proprietress Yoriko (Keiko Toda) reluctantly grants this request. Natsume’s kitchen presence is welcomed by Yoriko’s genial American spouse, Julian (Nathan Berg), and scorned by bitchy perfectionist Mariko (Noriko Eguchi). A somewhat mysterious friend of the patisserie is food critic and teacher Tomura (Yosuke Eguchi), a brooding loner we eventually learn was a legendary patissier himself just a few years prior.

The heroine’s comic blunders and gradual learning curve dominate the pic’s first half. At the midpoint, things take a formulaically darker turn. Still, what ensues is handled with sufficient taste by Fukagawa & Co. to avoid excess sentimentality or contrivance. Mercifully, the script does not orchestrate a romance between dignified Tomura and Natsume, whose whiny immaturity is no less irksome for being comically deliberate.

Perfs and packaging are all accomplished in a pleasing minor key.

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