Savoring Paris

About the movie

Ella Weber seems both to have everything and nothing at all. She has a good job as a recipe developer for San Diego headquartered Bistro Bon Vivant, an American chain restaurant. However, they serve "fake" French food against her sensibilities in she actually enjoying good food. She has a loving mother, real estate agent Laury Weber, who is always trying to get her to settle into a stable life, which for Laury means Ella buying a condo again against Ella's sensibilities. Feeling unsettled following a few setbacks, Ella decides she needs to re-energize herself by immediately taking a vacation somewhat hearkening back to her favorite vacation memory when she was twenty-two: to Paris to eat her favorite cheese. The cheese this time around in Paris she finds equally as transformative especially against the plastic cheese they serve at the restaurant, but not the grumpy cheese-monger. But she finds a kindred spirit in Clotilde Aubergel, the woman from who she is subletting an apartment for her two-week stay, Clotilde who is able to convince her that to find herself she should stay in Paris for three months. That decision is made all the easier in meeting Clotilde's handsome cousin, restaurant critic Gaston Aubergel who shows his romantic interest in her. They embarking on a relationship is despite Ella knowing that her stay in Paris has an imminent end date, and that Gaston self-admittedly has a bit of a reputation as a player. That extension allows Ella the goal to try all three hundred cheeses at the fromagerie. She ultimately gets to know the cheese-monger upon he offering her a part-time job at the shop. He is Serge Pelerin, a former lawyer who fell into the cheese business in finding a good cheese as transformative as Ella. As Ella's time progresses, she may discover what and who she is looking for in life, she actually getting the latter dependent upon if she and the person in question can get over a misunderstanding.—Huggo