Recipe for a Killing

Thelma and Louise is how many will greet this edgy thriller-cum-psycho-bloodfest. Actually Natural Born Killers meets Babette’s Feast might be closer to the mark.

It’s a dark and unwittingly funny tale of lost teen Aline who, dropped by her older (seriously freaky) lover, takes up a job as the cook at a small vineyard run and owned by the entirely revolting Gerard.

The appalling man is food mad and he’d kill, literally, for a good céleri remoulade so Aline has her work cut out for her staying one step ahead of the ogre. But this is one streetwise dyke, and all is not what it at first seems.

What makes Recipe for a Killing so watchable is the Altmanesque retelling of the same story from two different angles. Hugely entertaining and yet more evidence, if any were needed, that the French, though mad as balloons, make delightfully unpredictable cinema.