More than one recipe for success

Upstart micro-distributor BEV Pictures’ inaugural release turns out to be as smart as the original acquisition, a multi-award winner aimed squarely at the audiences responsible for the success of hit docs like Spellbound, Hoop Dreams and Mad Hot Ballroom. Like the great chefs their subjects aspire to become, filmmakers Jennifer Grausman and Mark Becker have created a delectable confection, patiently assembling their ingredients and allowing the mixture ample time to bake in the sure knowledge that the result will be spectacular. Given BEV’s limited resources, the film is unlikely to match the success of the aforementioned films, but a release modeled on Paramount Classics’ release pattern for Mad Hot Ballroom—a spectacular counterprogramming success released in May of 2005—should reap dividends with strong word of mouth and solid platform numbers well into the summer and quite possibly into the fall.

Part Gordon Ramsey, part Jaime Escalante, Culinary Arts instructor Wilma Stephenson brings fury and passion to the craft of cooking, inspiring her students at Philadelphia’s inner city Frankford High School to excel in ways that sometimes seem cruel and even counterintuitive. But the methods deliver undeniable results, not simply in the classroom but also in the often turbulent lives of her students. Three students are selected for special focus here: Erica Gaither, a cheerleader who struggles with the demands of a fragmented family and the responsibilities of caring for her blind younger sister; Tyree Dudley, a star football player with similarly challenging family responsibilities; and Fatoumata Dembele, a Malian immigrant who only four years prior arrived in the United States without speaking a word of English.

At just 99 minutes, there’s clearly not enough time in Pressure Cooker to provide the same kind of penetrating look into the students’ personal lives that made Hoop Dreams such a resounding classic in the documentary field, but that’s also not the point. The goal here—as opposed to that in Hoop Dreams—is a wholly realizable one, namely the winning of any number of scholarships made available through the nonprofit Careers through Culinary Arts Program, quite possibly the only opportunity that many of the students will have to earn a higher education in a field about which they are truly passionate. Motivated by a determination to improve their lives, escape the struggle of the inner city and win the American Dream on their own terms, the students form a kind of surrogate family with Stephenson their willing, often cantankerous, matriarch.

Given that most of the real drama and emotional payoff will inevitably be back-loaded to the climactic competition, there’s something of a challenge in maintaining sufficient interest and momentum during the film’s first hour—a challenge that Grausman and Becker confront brilliantly by refusing the easy way out. Potentially maudlin detours into familial sob stories are kept to a minimum so as to emphasize what most matters to Erica, Tyree and Fatoumata: the future. That’s not to say that the personal doesn’t have an impact—it’s impossible to not be wholly smitten with Fatoumata in particular, a 4.0 student whose ragtag immigrant story and almost impossible talent and drive quite literally personifies the Statue of Liberty’s endlessly over-quoted inscription. But neither the filmmakers nor the students—nor, for that matter, Stephenson—are fishing for sympathy. What they really want most is to give back—to provide nourishment, literal and figurative, to those who have so generously helped nourish them.

Distributor: BEV Pictures
Director: Jennifer Grausman and Mark Becker
Producers: Jennifer Grausman
Genre: Documentary
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 99 min
Release date: May 27 NY, June 5 LA