TV & Film Picks: Tastefully Yours, SEC Environmental Film Festival, The Assessment

Tastefully Yours

Netflix

Do not attempt to watch this South Korean romantic comedy on an empty stomach. The culinary creations featured have propelled the 10-episode series to the top spot on Netflix’s list of Top 10 TV programmes in Singapore.

Apart from fine-dining dishes and traditional Korean fare, Tastefully Yours coasts on the sizzling chemistry between its lead actors. Actor Kang Ha-neul plays spoilt restaurateur Beom-woo, while actress Go Min-si is gifted chef Yeon-joo.

Beom-woo is on a quest to find that signature dish that will give his posh restaurant Motto a three-star rating from the Diamant Guide, the show’s take on the Michelin Guide. He chances upon Yeon-joo’s tiny diner, and is impressed by her farm-to-table cuisine. He offers to acquire her place, but despite being deep in debt, she is not selling.

It is a no-brainer that the bickering pair will fall in love. Tastefully Yours is filled with familiar K-drama tropes, but the simple narrative and visually appealing food – such as traditional Korean beef dishes neobiani and seopsanjeok – make the show more appetising.

SEC Environmental Film Festival

In celebration of World Environment Day on June 5, the Singapore Environment Council (SEC) has partnered the Singapore Film Society to host a three-day festival. It will feature three films that address global environmental challenges.

French stop-motion animation Savages (2024) by Oscar-nominated director Claude Barras will open the festival. Set in a tropical forest in Borneo, the movie revolves around two children and a rescued baby orangutan, and how they cope with deforestation.

A Crack In The Mountain (2022) is an award-winning documentary about the struggles to preserve Vietnam’s Hang Son Doong, the largest cave in the world. It is located in the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, a Unesco World Heritage site. The film seeks to address how a natural wonder can be exploited for tourism dollars and the challenges of environmental conservation.

The festival will close with Future Council (2024), a documentary that follows eight Australian children on a school excursion across Europe to seek solutions to the climate crisis. Together with director Damon Gameau, their mission is to better understand the planet’s predicament and explore solutions with some of the world’s largest polluters and influential companies.

Proceeds from the SEC Environmental Film Festival will go to the council’s outreach programmes in schools. As the SEC is a registered charity, movie ticket sales are eligible for tax rebates.

Where: GV Suntec City, 03-373 Suntec City, 3 Temasek Boulevard
MRT: Promenade
When: June 5 to 7, 7pm daily
Admission: $50
Info:

singaporefilmsociety.com/seceff

The Assessment (M18)

116 minutes, Amazon Prime
★★★★☆

Set in a future society post-environmental collapse, where the population is strictly regulated due to resource scarcity, the science-fiction thriller follows married couple Mia (Elizabeth Olsen) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel) as they are assessed on their eligibility to be parents.

The official assessor Virginia (Alicia Vikander) puts the couple through seven days of psychological torment by role-playing a wilful toddler. For instance, she pees on a dinner guest and flings food at “mummy” Mia in temper tantrums. What she is doing is testing Mia’s and Aaryan’s underlying insecurities to break them emotionally.

Not since she was an android seducing a hapless programmer (Domhnall Gleeson) in the 2014 British sci-fi flick Ex Machina has Vikander been this manipulative and sinister. Here is another extraordinary performance by the Swedish actress.

Olsen and Patel are also very good, reacting with a mix of discombobulation and distress as the black comedy in their unnerving three-hander turns to horror. – Whang Yeeling