Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Hunger’ on Netflix, Yet Another Critical Skewering of Upper-Crust Foodie Culture

Hunger (now on Netflix) finds Thai filmmaker Sitisiri Mongkolsiri taking a big ol’ skewer to the fancy-ass food movement – you know, the one that makes gullible rich people fork over big stacks of cash in order to “eat” gross foam and misc. liquid dribblings, you know, stuff like that. If it seems like you’ve heard this song before, well, you have; this film’s timing ain’t so great, considering the proliferation of similarly themed outings we saw in the last year or two (see the “What Movies Does This Remind You Of” section below, please!). But that doesn’t mean Hunger isn’t necessarily worth a watch, so let’s see if it puts anything fresh on this well-worn thematic plate, and from here on out, there will be no more corny food-related turns-of-phrase in this review, promise.

HUNGER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Chopchopchop goes the knife on the board. We see kitchen staff prepping the daylights out of stuff and arranging things just so for the boss’ inspection. And that boss, with his immaculately clean shoes and steely glare, is an exacting dictator. He is Chef Paul (Nopachai Jayanama), head of a high-end catering org dubbed Hunger. We see him reach into a tank and pull out a live lobster and coldly drive a butcher knife through the creature’s head. He drizzles some gray sludge sauce on the plate next to the lobster tail and the incredibly moneyed gent paying for all this takes a bite, and before you know it, he and his array of guests are horking it down as if they’re ravenously hungry after being lost in the desert for eight days. 

MEANWHILE, in a humble street corner noodle shop, Aoy (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying) sweats over an open flame, frying up pad see ew. It’s the type of homey place with lots of regular customers, all working-poor types to whom Aoy serves up “the usual.” Tone (Gunn Svasti) quietly sits at a table, eating his pad see ew; he calls Aoy over and says, “You’re too good to be working here.” He’s a cook on Chef Paul’s Hunger crew, and thinks she has what it takes to be the new recruit. Later, Aoy sits with her friends, who appear to be in their mid-20s; they lament their lot in life, working unsatisfying jobs and barely getting by. She’s the heir apparent to the noodle shop run by her father, whose mother taught him how to cook her delicious, unpretentious recipes. No foam here, and the key ingredient is always, of course, love. But is love enough? Not if you suck ass, or nurse a misguided urge to climb the class ladder.

So Aoy joins Tone in Chef Paul’s sparklingly clean stainless monochrome kitchen. Now, Chef Paul makes a fascist dictator look like Pooh Bear. He’ll slap you in the face and verbally berate you and throw things against the wall that whiz right by your ear. He smells Aoy’s neck and tells her to wash off the noodle-shop smell and we’re all like, LEAVE, RUN AWAY, GO BACK TO THE SHOP, WARNING, WARNING, RED FLAG, RED FLAG. Chef Paul makes sure everyone’s watching while he abuses Aoy, harshly criticizing how she holds the knife and how she cuts the meat and how she fries the meat, and then she stands there all night, burning her wrists with hot oil, trial-and-erroring her way through this wagyu-beef recipe,jazz drums skittering on the soundtrack, until she earns her spot. Now she’s center-stage at the birthday party of some f—ing retired military general, frying the wagyu beef, and by the time Chef Paul is done with it, all his high-class customers are rendered sloppy slobs with juice dribbling down their chins. This is Aoy’s taste of upper-crust glory. Ain’t it scrum-diddly-umptious?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, Flux Gourmet and A Taste of Hunger covered this subject matter in 2022 – albeit with fewer grumblestomach closeups of delicious-looking Thai noodle dishes.

Performance Worth Watching: Although she’s hampered by a screenplay that doesn’t quite give her enough character substance – Aoy is a hair or two shy of being fully three-dimensional – Chuengcharoensukying ably carries the film with a layered, resonant performance. 

Memorable Dialogue: Chef Paul gives Aoy a brief glimpse behind his psychological curtain: “To me, food made with love doesn’t exist. You need drive, not love.”

Sex and Skin: Brief lady toplessness.

Our Take: First off, Hunger doesn’t indulge the food-porn urges of other films of its ilk – none of the gourmet bullshit Chef Paul concocts looks particularly appetizing, especially compared to Aoy’s eminently consumable pad see ew. You’ll also notice that the ritzy upper-crusters who devour Chef Paul’s crap are sleazy crypto bros and flimsy socialites who couldn’t be any less appealing or free of substance; meanwhile – er, I mean, MEANWHILE – the average folk who frequent the noodle shop possess things like human feelings and compassion, possibly because they don’t have much else. 

Such are the big, bold lines Mongkolsiri and screenwriter Kongdej Jaturanrasumee draw between the socioeconomic classes here, with jumbo Crayolas. The commentary isn’t subtle or nuanced – the film thinks it’s come upon a profound truth when it asserts that one can hunger for more than just food. And so Aoy yearns for more than what she has, and soon finds herself in a careful-what-you-wish-for/don’t-become-what-you-hate plot as she gears up for a showdown with Chef Paul and the Daniel Plainview-esque Competition that burns eternal in him. He’s a walking, talking cautionary tale: Do not become this person! He’s miserable! And the film tends to repeatedly drive this point home with a ballpeen hammer – at nearly two-and-a-half hours, it could use an expedient edit – as it leans into its third-act contrivances.

Which isn’t to say Hunger is bad; it’s reasonably absorbing, and Chuengcharoensukying stirs up enough emotional chum to hold our interest. Mongkolsiri tries to find a happy medium between satire and straight drama, stopping short of outright hyperbole with portrayals of the grotesque excess of the rich, balancing them with the sentimental truths of the poor. The bottom-line message here is troublesome, implying that staying in your socioeconomic lane may be for the best. Then again, maybe that applies only to the business of food, which is the great big target du jour in film these days.

Our Call: Hunger isn’t thoughtless or unambitious. It’s reasonably well-made, and visually compelling, but it’s ultimately too derivative, and obvious in its thematic execution, to recommend. SKIP IT, especially if you’ve seen the other, better films of its ilk. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.