love charlie movie review

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Rebecca Halpern's "Love, Charlie" is an admiring history lesson about one of Chicago's greatest chefs, Charlie Trotter. At its peak in the '90s, his Chicago restaurant Charlie Trotter was considered one of the best in the world. Trotter achieved celebrity status alongside the TV chef ascendance of Chef Emeril Lagasse and could count Anthony Bourdain , Chef Wolfgang Puck , and countless visitors as his fans. And some of his former collaborators, like Chef Grant Achatz , now of Chicago's gastronomic miracle Alinea restaurant, can share kitchen stories of interactions that are equally filled with terror or awe.  

A certain level of dedication helps one achieve this greatness and status, and "Love, Charlie" allows the more challenging parts about Trotter to lay as they do. His kitchen, for one, was an intense, cutthroat atmosphere that one could say is par the course for the restaurant industry or not worth romanticizing (this documentary does not do that). Many stories are shared here of his temper and volume when chastising his crew; even his cameo in " My Best Friend's Wedding " has him portraying a version of himself in a frantic kitchen, threatening to kill an employee's family if they screw up. It was an in-joke that came from a particular place, however much it was meant to be a parody. 

"Love, Charlie" recounts Trotter's various achievements that have impacted how we think about, look at, and experience food. He was considered a forward-thinker when it came to providing more vegetarian-friendly dishes; his cookbooks shot food in sumptuous close-up, with Achatz lovingly calling it "pornographic"; he put a special table in the middle of the kitchen for patrons to appreciate the process that went into their foods. 

The editorial assembly and talking-head presentation of "Love, Charlie" is a bit too dry for my taste, struggling to build an intriguing pacing with and-then-this-happened storytelling. But the emotional power of the film benefits from its extensive archive and how it displays it. Through countless letters and photos, Trotter feels to be an active presence in the movie, with Halpern cutting to close-ups now and then of his tiny but microscopic penmanship. Collected mainly by his first wife, these different artifacts allow him to be the chorus in this retelling of his story. When "Love, Charlie" reaches a particularly tough part of his life, after the restaurant has closed and isolated him from his working self, he hauntingly writes: "If you ever go through a recluse period, my friend, make the most of it."  

"Love, Charlie" throws around the word "enigma" when trying to sell Trotter to viewers without embracing all of him. It's a key term, as enigmas are mysteries and contradictions. Halpern's documentary does best when its tone can balance admiring his achievement and staying honest about the bridges he burned, the employees he seemingly worked to the ground, or the toll his passions took on him. Halpern's film doesn't try to have all the answers about Trotter so much as to stand back and look at all the pieces together. 

Now playing in theaters and available on Apple TV+ and Amazon.

Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Fascinating documentary gives a taste of Charlie Trotter’s dazzling talent, complex personality

‘love, charlie’ tells the chicago chef’s story from his international fame to his shocking death..

Chef Charlie Trotter is photographed in the dining room of his restaurant at 816 W. Armitage in 2011.

Rich Hein~Sun-Times

The Chicago chef Charlie Trotter had become such a culinary superstar in the 1990s that when the producers of the Julia Roberts romantic comedy “My Best Friend’s Wedding” were looking for someone to play a temperamental chef, they cast Trotter.

As himself.

“I’m gonna kill your whole family if you don’t get this right,” Trotter bellows to an assistant. “I need this perfect!”

Whether you’ve been around long enough to remember the meteoric rise, long reign and tragic fall of Charlie Trotter, or you’re only vaguely familiar or utterly unaware of Trotter’s legacy, the documentary “Love, Charlie,” stands as the definitive look at the man’s life and times. Neither hagiography nor cold-plate dish, this is a solidly researched, well-photographed, crisply edited film that chronicles Trotter’s life with journalistic integrity, while providing fascinating glimpses into the “foodie” culture of the times, in Chicago and around the world.

Chef Charlie Trotter is photographed in the kitchen of his namesake restaurant in 2011.

The gifted Chicago director Rebecca Halpern sets the tone for “Love, Charlie” with footage of Trotter getting miked for an interview and noting, only semi-facetiously, “My philosophy has always been, if it weren’t for employees and it weren’t for customers, the restaurant business would be the greatest business in the world. And basically, I hate people.”

Except for when he was loving them. “Love, Charlie” paints a complex and nuanced portrait of a man who could be a hopeless romantic, who mentored dozens upon dozens of young talents, who is lauded as a wonderful friend and a dedicated father — but could also be enigmatic, mercurial, hot-tempered and dismissive of anyone he felt couldn’t meet his impossibly high standards.

Writer-director Halpern crafts the story in chronological fashion, drawing upon 8mm home movie footage of Trotter’s happy and comfortable childhood growing up on the North Shore; clips of Trotter making TV appearances with the likes of Julia Child and Gordon Ramsay and working his magic in the kitchen, and interviews with his mother, his sister, his first wife and a bevy of renowned colleagues.

We follow the young Chuck Trotter’s path as he finds jobs working at restaurants such as the Ground Round in Wilmette and the Monastery in Madison, Wisconsin, where he attended the University of Wisconsin and met his first wife, Lisa Ehrlich. After working at restaurants in San Francisco and Florida, Trotter eventually returned to Chicago, where in 1987 he told his recently retired businessman father, Bob, he was ready to open his own restaurant. With Bob as the financial backer, Chuck opened Charlie Trotter’s. (The thought was that “Chuck Trotter’s” sounded too much like a steakhouse.)

Chef Charlie Trotter prepares a dish at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles during a benefit for public television in 1998.

The concept was a tasting menu of 10 courses, with “no one focal point [as] everything builds,” Trotter explains. This was a groundbreaking approach for the mid-1980s, and Charlie Trotter’s was an immediate sensation, drawing throngs every night and earning raves from the media. “He was the first American kid to open a great restaurant, to be really fearless, to invent new things, to do new things,” says Wolfgang Puck.

We see footage of controlled chaos in the kitchen, and learn of Trotter’s single-minded determination, which eventually cost him his first marriage. A colleague recalls Trotter saying, “Some chefs have great marriages and others have great restaurants. I want to have a great restaurant.”

The “Raw” cookbook by Charlie Trotter is one of the many books penned by the late chef.

Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, Charlie Trotter’s remained an international sensation, with customers flying in from all over the world and Trotter expanding his empire to include restaurants in Vegas and Cabo, a signature line of organic gourmet food products and more than a dozen books. Sadly, though, a letter Trotter’s father Bob had written to him a year before Bob’s death, warning his son about his temper and his demanding ways, turned out to be prescient. A revolving door of staffers would exit when they couldn’t stand the figurative heat in the kitchen.

In 2003, overworked employees who hadn’t been compensated for long hours filed a class-action lawsuit and received a total of more than $700,000 in back pay — but anyone who took a slice of settlement was essentially dead to Trotter. “Charlie was the hardest on himself,” says Emeril Lagasse. “[But] if mediocrity was in the air, he was going to destroy it.”

A photo of young Charlie Trotter during his time in San Francisco (1983-1984) when he had a brief, six-week stint at the California Culinary Academy. While in San Francisco, Trotter also worked at Cafe Bedford, Le Méridien, and Campton Place Restaurant (now Taj Campton Place Hotel) under Bradley Ogden.

Photo courtesy of Lisa Ehrlich

In 2012, after a run for the ages, Charlie Trotter’s finally closed. “Love, Charlie” illustrates how the next year was not kind to Charlie, as he suffered from health problems and was involved in some bizarre incidents, including allegedly selling a counterfeit bottle of wine for $46,000 and showing up at the site of his former restaurant and disrupting an after-school program. Even Trotter’s death in November of 2013 was the subject of scrutiny and speculation, with rumors of drug or alcohol abuse or a suicide. (The medical examiner’s office found cause of death to be a stroke.)

Friends and loved ones note that in addition to Charlie’s physical ailments, he seemed lost without his namesake and legendary home base. Laments the great chef Grant Achatz of Alinea fame, “When the restaurant closed, Charlie closed.”

This is one of the best documentaries of the year.

• Charlie Trotter exhibit a glimpse of the man behind the legend
• Two Las Vegas/Chicago chefs remember Charlie Trotter
• 8 reasons Charlie Trotter was special for Chicago dining

‘Love, Charlie’ Review: Charlie Trotter Doc Recounts a Legendary Chef’s Rise and Collapse

Director Rebecca Halpern mixes insights with frenetic editing and too many unanswered questions

Groundbreaking Chicago chef Charlie Trotter didn’t invent abusive behavior, but his star cameo at the height of his culinary fame, in the 1997 Julia Roberts comedy “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” certainly helped normalize it. In the scene — referenced twice in Rebecca Halpern’s documentary about him, “Love, Charlie” — the bespectacled Trotter, overseeing a frantic kitchen and hoping to please Roberts’ star restaurant critic, barks at a cook, “I will kill your whole family if you don’t get this right! I need this perfect!”

We don’t learn if he ad-libbed this line (that would have been a telling detail), but judging from the life story Halpern has to tell, it encapsulates what he was ultimately known for: drive, dedication to high standards and not always the best behavioral instincts. Trotter — who died in 2013, one year after he’d closed his legendary eponymous restaurant at the 25-year mark — proves more than enough subject for a documentary, considering his ambition, cuisine, innovations (the chef’s table inside the kitchen), trend-setting (tasting menus, spotlighting vegetables), charitable ventures, James Beard awards and general stature at a turning point for fine dining and food stardom in America.

Then there’s the thornier stuff: the three marriages, the fear he instilled in staff, professional jealousies, a class-action lawsuit against him and health issues he refused to address. Many loved him, and even those he treated terribly didn’t stay mad for very long. Superstar Alinea chef Grant Achatz, the most incisive and interesting of Halpern’s interviewees, describes his up-and-down relationship with his former boss, then rival, before he concludes: “I didn’t know him at all.”

An active, inquisitive Illinois kid from the upper middle class with a gift for cooking and a love for high-end cuisine, Trotter bypassed the usual route of running someone else’s place first by opening Charlie Trotter’s in 1987 with his businessman dad’s money. An instant success, with an ever-changing menu — Trotter liked comparing his craft to jazz improvisation — it put Chicago on the fine-dining map worldwide.

It also became Trotter’s entire identity. First wife Lisa Ehrlich speaks glowingly of how their young friendship became a romance, and with sadness about how the Chuck she knew in youth, a fun-loving adventurer, was lost as he became the demanding, excellence-driven, empire-building “Charlie.”

But in trying to unpack a complicated figure through interviews (including Wolfgang Puck and Emeril Lagasse), archival footage and a restlessly edited style barreling through the biographical details, Halpern has made what feels like a jumbled, incomplete portrait, more like watching the ingredients to a complex meal being tossed around instead of savoring a layered, completed dish. It’s fast-paced to a fault, and balanced well enough between what’s laudatory and lamentable, but the storytelling leaves mysteries behind.

Ehrlich is all over “Love, Charlie” for instance — the title comes from how he signed his gazillion postcards and letters to her (and presumably, all friends he wrote to) — but there are no interviews with second wife Lynn, his son with her, Dylan, or his widow, Rochelle, all of whom are cursorily referenced. Nor is there any explanation about why they didn’t participate.

And while we get a blow-by-blow of his difficult final years of declining significance, off-putting behavior and bad health — the “warts and all” stuff — there’s little about the philanthropic efforts that won him a James Beard Humanitarian award in the year before his death. There’s text at the end about his foundations, but the lack of information about their creation, what they do and what they meant to Trotter feels like a missing chapter.

“Love, Charlie” plays like a whirlwind story, and an often entertaining one, but there’s no breathing room to process anything beyond the highs and lows. We’re left in some unresolved limbo between celebrating what makes a high-end restaurant sing and considering this culinary legend’s life a cautionary tale.

“Love, Charlie” opens in US theaters and on demand Nov. 18 via Greenwich Entertainment.

Canada's Documentary Magazine

Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter Review – Pursuing Perfection

A balanced look at the original taskmaster chef

Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter (USA, 96 min.) Dir. Rebecca Halpern

The aura of the celebrity chef consistently pleases the palette. Last year’s arthouse satire The Menu , for example, skewered the world of megalomaniacal taskmasters who run their kitchens like boot camps and deliver small plates with big price tags to high falutin’ foodies. Ralph Fiennes’ acclaimed and feared Chef Slawik seems served from the same pot as Charlie Trotter, the late Chicago chef who helped revolutionize American cooking. The Menu finds spot-on satire in Slawik’s creations that draw from the remote island that defines his kitchen’s exclusivity. Beyond Slawik’s devotion to locally sourced ingredients and imaginative pairings, though, one sees Charlie Trotter’s personality within The Menu ’s cutting chef.

There’s a moment in Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter in which the chef mentions the adage “the customer’s always right.” He punctuates it with a comically dramatic pause. While Trotter never reached Slawik’s feat of serving a literal “eat the rich” experience, he displays throughout the documentary a distrust of his clients’ palettes. However, as director Rebecca Halpern builds her portrait of the mercurial chef, Love, Charlie illustrates how Trotter’s ability to steer his customers’ tastes arguably served his success. The doc also suggests that Trotter’s strict adherence to his own doctrine may have been his downfall in a world in which tastes constantly change.

From Bland to Grand

Halpen assembles many of Trotter’s family members and colleagues to chart a conventional if satisfying doc portrait. The film explores how, like many American chefs of his generation, Trotter grew up on hamburgers, hotdogs, and meatloaf. His sister, Anne, and mother, Dona-Lee, explain how meals in the Trotter home were scheduled and serviceable. Perfectly good and balanced, but not exactly fine dining. However, an education in blandness offers inspiring for higher education. Halpern sizzles through Trotter’s hunger for finer fare and an appetite for education. Charlie portrays an idealist, but also an insatiable drive for perfection as Trotter begins his culinary journey.

Through interviews with Trotter’s first wife Lisa Ehrlich and extensive archival material, as Trotter was an avid writer, Love, Charlie captures the future chef’s interest in the culinary arts. Ehrlich recalls an extensive tour of Paris in which they sampled and evaluated the finest eateries. The film charts Trotter’s whirlwind job-hopping through American kitchens. Love, Charlie tells how Trotter learned tips here and tricks there. As with the French immersion trip, though, touring kitchens informed Trotter’s sense of a restaurant’s machinery.

The Chef’s Brand

When Charlie Trotter’s opens in Chicago in 1987, Halpern shows how Trotter took American cuisine by storm. With immediate praise and worldwide recognition as one of America’s best restaurateurs, his plates awakened taste buds across Chicago. Moreover, the film shows how Trotter’s way of running his restaurant evolved from traditional à la carte menus that inspired complacent cooking and eating. Instead, he zeroed in on curated menus that changed daily with fresh ingredients. The talking heads, who include hands from the kitchen and diners from the floor, share how this method kept Trotter and his sous-chefs on their feet and guests coming back for more.

Similarly, Halpern illustrates how Trotter was among the first true celebrity chefs. On the heels of Julia Child and in the company of Emeril Lagasse and Wolfgang Puck , both of whom appear in the doc, Trotter embodied the rock star persona that would imbue fine dining with innovations in cuisine, worldly knowledge, and adrenaline-pumping energy, later embodied by the likes of Anthony Bourdain. From his exquisitely photographed cookbooks to his awkward television appearances, Trotter could enter as many homes as Chef Boyardee, but elevate wannabe chefs in the process.

At the same time, Halpern shows how the celebrity spotlight fuelled and fed Trotter’s brash persona. This celebrity peaked with a cameo in the Julia Roberts’ rom-com My Best Friend’s Wedding in which Trotter appeared as a ravenous chef who humorously threatened staff while tossing plates at the ready. As one interviewee says, one can only parody oneself if one’s persona exists in the public consciousness.

A Spoiled Meal

With this drive to deliver a new form of perfection daily, though, Halpen captures Trotter’s precipitous decline. Ehrlich recalls how her husband’s true marriage was to his kitchen. She shares memories of his exhaustion and indifference. Among them is a poignant story about how Ehrlich let the lightbulbs in their home burn out and waited to see if Trotter noticed. He didn’t. She says when she finally saw Charlie reading in kitchen with the refrigerator door propped open to illuminate the paper, she knew it was time to call it quits. Unfortunately, Ehrlich doesn’t share if the fridge light was the only bulb Trotter bothered to change.

The spoiled marriage signals a larger change in Trotter’s demeanour. Love, Charlie , through archives and interviews, shows how the love also faded from Trotter’s professional life. His colleagues speak to a cutting cruelty that permeated the kitchen. Coworkers recall Trotter berating his employees, sometimes using one person as a conduit to rebuke another. Charlie Trotter’s, for all its delectable creations, seems like a textbook toxic work environment. All the burnout leads to lawsuits, severed ties, and soured appetites.

A Study in Workaholism

Moreover, the study in workaholism lets Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter rise above the wave of celebrity chef documentaries that popped up as quickly as high-end eateries piggybacked on Trotter’s trailblazing cuisine. One sees the physical change in Trotter’s persona and comportment. The innocent sparkle one observes in the first act extinguishes in favour of a hardened, laser-focused precision. There’s a point at which Trotter’s perfectionism confuses art with science.

The shift dramatically coincides with the advent of molecular gastronomy and the arrival of Michelin stars in American kitchens. As tastes across America evolve and Charlie Trotter’s remains rooted to its tradition, the chef can’t compete with kitchens that are admittedly more au courant . Then the 2008 financial crisis topples his empire and he calls it quits on his restaurant’s 25 th anniversary.

The film smartly celebrates Charlie Trotter without romanticizing his persona. On the heels of Morgan Neville’s slicker Anthony Bourdain doc Roadrunner and its inquiry into a top chef’s suicide, Halpern’s glimpse into Trotter’s fatalist perfectionism doesn’t put the chef on the same pedestal. Instead, she captures Trotter’s contradictions in his pursuit of the recipe for success. Sometimes, the most important step of a recipe, and the one most frequently forgotten one, is to let a dish rest.

Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter opens at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema on Jan. 2.

It comes to home video on jan. 31..

• Anthony Bourdain
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• Emeril Lagasse
• food on film
• Love Charlie
• Rebecca Halpern
• talking heads
• Wolfgang Puck

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Love Charlie’ on VOD, A Documentary About The Legendary Chicago Chef Who Elevated American Cuisine

Where to stream:.

• Love Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Taste of Things’ on Acorn TV, a Sumptuous Foodie Film Starring Juliette Binoche

Stream it or skip it: 'cooking up murder: uncovering the story of césar román' on netflix, about an acclaimed spanish chef who was convicted of a grisly murder, stream it or skip it: ‘unfrosted’ on netflix, jerry seinfeld's scattershot assemblage of dumb jokes posing as a loony spoof, stream it or skip it: 'boiling point' on netflix, a pulse-pounding restaurant drama that's a british cousin of 'the bear'.

Love, Charlie, now available on VOD streaming services like Amazon Prime Video , is director Rebecca Halperin’s story of the life of an iconic chef and proprietor of Charlie Trotter’s, a groundbreaking Chicago restaurant. Sadly, today we remember Charlie Trotter not just as a great chef, but as another casualty of the incredibly stressful business of running a critically acclaimed restaurant. Halperin tells this story in compelling fashion, braiding together archival materials and reflections from some of his peers, including Emeril Lagasse and Grant Achatz.

LOVE CHARLIE: THE RISE AND FALL OF CHEF CHARLIE TROTTER : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: In 1987, Charlie Trotter opened the best restaurant in Chicago. In 2013, Charlie Trotter’s son found his father’s body in the chef’s Chicago townhouse. In between, Charlie Trotter opened and closed three other restaurants, authored or co-authored almost a dozen books on cooking and leadership, established a reputation as a talented tyrant, and garnered a cameo in 1997’s My Best Friend’s Wedding , where his one line is “I will kill your whole family if you don’t get this right! I need this perfect!” Towards the end of his flagship restaurant’s run, Trotter faced multiple lawsuits concerning his labor practices.

Love, Charlie follows a familiar rise-and-fall trajectory, and is focused more on the person than the chef, and more on the chef than the restaurant. Trotter is a compelling figure and Halperin tells a compelling story, though there are viewers like me who would have liked to know more about the food. (This reviewer spent five years in Chicago during Trotter’s heyday as a broke grad student who could not dream of eating at his restaurant.) For food nerds, some of the most engaging parts of the film come in interviews with some of his peers, including Emeril Lagasse and Wolfgang Puck, and most especially Grant Achatz, a Trotter pupil who eclipsed his teacher with Alinea, the Chicago bastion of molecular gastronomy. Back in 2012, I wrote about how an NY Times article suggested to me that Trotter was a man out of his time in the early 2010s, where the buzz for restaurants was either for gonzo disciples of the so-called Lardcore movement, or the avant-garde sculptures of chefs who were adherents of what Nathan Myhrvold insists on calling “modernist cuisine.”

Beyond the story of the restaurant, the documentary traces Trotter from his youth, and includes interviews with friends who knew him as Chuck, before he pivoted to Charlie for the name of his restaurant. His first wife, Lisa Ehrlich, participates in this documentary very generously, as does close friend and fellow chef Carrie Nahabedian. Some of the most memorable reflections come from Ray Harris, a New York investment banker who ate at Trotter’s approximately 400 times, and as Trotter was fond of pointing out, never had the same dish twice.

The biggest takeaway from these recollections is the incredible intensity of the energy he carried with him throughout his life. One index of that are film’s use of shots of the hundreds of postcards and letters he wrote to friends during his young life. If you are old enough to remember life before social media, you may feel a pang of nostalgia for a reminder of how we used to keep in touch with our friends.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: If you are jonesing for another season of The Bear , Love Charlie has chefs yelling in a Chicago kitchen, and more than a little of the toxic masculinity that drives that show. And honestly, some of Charlie Trotter, the person’s forays beyond Charlie Trotter’s, the restaurant, will remind you of some of the interplay of chef egos in Pixar’s 2007 Ratatouille .

Performance Worth Watching: Fine dining nerds will enjoy seeing how the somber occasion of remembering their friend Charlie knocks some of the bluster out of Emeril, and some of the pretense out of Achatz. Emeril and Trotter were friends, while Achatz and Trotter had a more complex A Star Is Born type relationship, but both chefs are more about their reflections than their brands, which is refreshing.

Memorable Dialogue: “I will kill your whole family if you don’t get this right! I need this perfect!” The first time we see Trotter say this phrase, it’s not clear that he is playing a parody of himself in a Julia Roberts movie. It says a lot that this moment is entirely plausible as something Actual Charlie Trotter would say in his Actual Restaurant.

Sex and Skin: Nada.

Our Call: STREAM IT! If you were lucky enough to eat at Trotter’s, or if you wish you had, put this movie on your holiday watchlist.

Jonathan Beecher Field was born in New England, educated in the Midwest, and teaches in the South. He Tweets professionally as  @ThatJBF , and unprofessionally as  @TheGurglingCod . He also sometimes writes for  Avidly  and  Common-Place .

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‘Love, Charlie’ Review: Charlie Trotter Doc Recounts a Legendary Chef’s Rise and Collapse

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Groundbreaking Chicago chef Charlie Trotter didn’t invent abusive behavior, but his star cameo at the height of his culinary fame, in the 1997 Julia Roberts comedy “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” certainly helped normalize it. In the scene — referenced twice in Rebecca Halpern’s documentary about him, “Love, Charlie” — the bespectacled Trotter, overseeing a frantic kitchen and hoping to please Roberts’ star restaurant critic, barks at a cook, “I will kill your whole family if you don’t get this right! I need this perfect!”

We don’t learn if he ad-libbed this line (that would have been a telling detail), but judging from the life story Halpern has to tell, it encapsulates what he was ultimately known for: drive, dedication to high standards, and not always the best behavioral instincts. Trotter — who died in 2013, one year after he’d closed his legendary eponymous restaurant at the 25-year mark — proves more than enough subject for a documentary, considering his ambition, cuisine, innovations (the chef’s table inside the kitchen), trend-setting (tasting menus, spotlighting vegetables), charitable ventures, James Beard awards, and general stature at a turning point for fine dining and food stardom in America.

Then there’s the thornier stuff: the three marriages, the fear he instilled in staff, professional jealousies, a class-action lawsuit against him, and health issues he refused to address. Many loved him, and even those he treated terribly didn’t stay mad for long. Superstar Alinea chef Grant Achatz, the most incisive and interesting of Halpern’s interviewees, describes his up-down relationship with his former boss, then rival, as eventually making him think, “I didn’t know him at all.”

Also Read: ‘The Menu’ Film Review: Ralph Fiennes Serves Revenge, Cold or Hot, But Always With Style

An active, inquisitive Illinois kid from the upper middle class with a gift for cooking and a love for high-end cuisine, Trotter bypassed the usual route of running someone else’s place first by opening Charlie Trotter’s in 1987 with his businessman dad’s money. An instant success, with an ever-changing menu — Trotter liked comparing his craft to jazz improvisation — it put Chicago on the fine-dining map worldwide.

It also became Trotter’s entire identity. First wife Lisa Ehrlich speaks glowingly of how their young friendship became a romance, and with sadness about how the Chuck she knew in youth, a fun-loving adventurer, was lost as he became the demanding, excellence-driven, empire-building “Charlie.”

Also Read: Gael Greene, Groundbreaking Restaurant Critic and ‘Foodie’ Pioneer, Dies at 88

But in trying to unpack a complicated figure through interviews (including Wolfgang Puck and Emeril Lagasse), archival footage, and a restlessly edited style barreling through the biographical details, Halpern has made what feels like a jumbled, incomplete portrait, more like watching the ingredients to a complex meal being tossed around instead of savoring a layered, completed dish. It’s fast-paced to a fault, and balanced well enough between what’s laudatory and lamentable, but its storytelling leaves mysteries behind.

Ehrlich is all over “Love, Charlie” for instance — the title comes from how he signed his gazillion postcards and letters to her (and presumably, all friends he wrote to) — but there are no interviews with second wife Lynn, his son with her, Dylan, or his widow, Rochelle, all of whom are cursorily referenced. Nor is there any explanation why they didn’t participate.

Also Read: Roku Greenlights Foodie Shows from ‘Iron Chef’ Star Masaharu Morimoto and Michael Strahan

And in the other direction, it’s strange that, while we get a blow-by-blow of his difficult final years of declining significance, off-putting behavior and bad health — the “warts and all” stuff — there’s little about the philanthropic efforts that won him a James Beard Humanitarian award in the year before his death. There’s text at the end about his foundations, but the lack of information about their creation, what they do, and what they meant to Trotter feels like a missing chapter.

“Love, Charlie” plays like a whirlwind story, and an often entertaining one, but there’s no breathing room to process anything beyond hitting the highs and lows. We’re left in some unresolved limbo between celebrating what makes a high-end restaurant sing and considering this culinary legend’s life a cautionary tale.

“Love, Charlie” opens in US theaters and on demand Nov. 18 via Greenwich Entertainment.

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TV and Streaming | ‘Love, Charlie’ is a documentary about the…

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Things to do, tv and streaming | ‘love, charlie’ is a documentary about the fearsome, legendary chicago chef charlie trotter. a movie and food critic debate the cost of his kind of fame..

The people with money came. From everywhere. Trotter — like Michael Jordan and Oprah Winfrey and a small handful of other globally famous Chicago celebrities — rode the wave even as he churned up a malestrom of controversy. The restaurant hung in there, increasingly quietly, until 2012, long enough for Trotter to see one of his former employees, Grant Achatz, open Alinea and snag the coveted Michelin three-star rating that forever eluded Trotter. The Wilmette native died in 2013 at age 54.

“Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter” is Rebecca Halpern’s even-handed, clear-eyed portrait of the man who upped Chicago’s fine-dining game, permanently — as permanently as anything in the restaurant business can be, anyway. On Saturday and Monday, the Music Box Theatre presents screenings of the documentary, also available for home viewing on most streaming platforms.

Halpern’s movie played the 2021 Chicago International Film Festival; to me and others, it was “the first fully successful documentary about a high-flying Chicago chef’s triumph and torment.” Does Trotter’s story point to something in the air, water and competitive possibilities of Chicago? I wanted to know more, so I sat down with Tribune food critic Nick Kindelsperger to talk about the movie, and the difficult, combustible personality at its center. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Michael Phillips : Nick, it seems to me any documentary on Chicago’s restaurant scene has to work differently for different segments of its audience. You have the serious foodies who have followed the restaurant scene in this city, religiously. And then you have people like me who probably have to be pulled in by personality. Did “Love, Charlie” work for you?

Nick Kindelsperger : It did, although it’s a little too close to home. I really enjoyed how the filmmaker put it together, with all those postcards and letters he wrote to his first wife (Lisa Ehrlich, one of several key on-camera interview subjects). I never went to Charlie Trotter’s; that was before my time. I couldn’t afford to go there when it was still open. But its impact was huge and the film does a really good job of explaining Trotter’s influence without weighing the film down.

Phillips: Tell me more about the “too close to home” part.

Kindelsperger : I found a lot of it deeply sad. To see the transformation of Charlie Trotter over the years, from when he was healthy to the changes and the troubles at the end — it forces you to consider, in his case, what restaurants can do to people. Is this what it really takes to be a good artist in the restaurant sense? To be willing to destroy yourself? The daily torture of creating a great meal — it wears on people. It’s hard to watch. Trotter was a driven guy, and most of my favorite art is made by people who don’t leave anything on the table, but ….

Phillips: That same intensity can happen in a comparatively humble mom-and-pop place in a strip mall, where a meal might cost you 13 bucks.

Kindelsperger: Yeah. I just wrote about a great Rogers Park restaurant called Khmai , which does Cambodian fine cuisine, and the person behind it is there early morning, late at night — she’s so driven, and the results are right there on the plate. But burnout is a real thing. Is it an option maybe to, you know, shine brightly for a little bit, and then burn out? Or is it better to set up a system where you stick around for a long time?

Phillips: Trotter made it for 25 years. Maybe it’s like a great rock band, or a great storefront theater that might go mainstream for a while, and then fades out. Some don’t, of course, but most do. Maybe there’s a natural if bittersweet life span for a lot of artistic endeavors.

Kindelsperger : I mean, 25 years is a long time in the restaurant game. Food is such a temporal thing. Any chef should be proud of 25 years.

Phillips: Is there something about Chicago that encouraged this kind of culinary competition among restaurant giants, and then — for some — a push toward some sort of crisis point?

Kindelsperger: Good question. Chicago almost shouldn’t exist. So cold in the winter. So hot in the summer. You have to want to be here to succeed. But it’s a big city where you can still find opportunities to do projects that would be too expensive in New York or LA. Trotter’s obvious passion and drive was interestingly framed in the movie, I thought, because (the filmmakers) didn’t ignore the obvious dark side. Obviously he had a temper, and maybe he couldn’t maintain his own level of quality without it. But I’d like to think you can.

His brilliance was not in creating a French restaurant, but a two-star Michelin French restaurant experience in America, with American ingredients. And not a lot of butter! He didn’t use a lot of butter; it was a lighter style of cuisine. He didn’t create recipes that went on to be re-created by people all around the Midwest. I mean, Trotter’s recipes are hilariously elaborate. Everything’s wrapped around something, and then stuffed into another thing. All the recipes have appendices where you read it and it says that, oh, by the way, you needed to start making that part of the recipe three days ago (laughs).

Phillips: Trotter’s, Alinea — I’m stating the obvious, but these places cost many hundreds of dollars. I can’t help but be reminded that I tend not to have spare hundreds of dollars lying around.

Kindelsperger: When I was younger, I felt incredibly conflicted about going (to the highest-end establishments). No 28-year-old should be spending that kind of money on a meal. It’s just not responsible. I guess I still feel that way. When I go to a sushi restaurant, and it’s, like, $400, and the meal’s over in a hour …

Phillips : Wow. Where was that?

Kindelsperger: Mako, really high end, West Loop. I feel a lot of conflict. I mean, you want artists to make money. They put a lot of effort in, and if you think the effort is justified, you pay with your wallet. But when you roll in wine and service, at some point you’re thinking, do I need this? Do I care about them clearing the plates after every course, and going through 18 different plates?

On the other hand: I’m so interested in food, and how things taste, I’ll drive any distance to try the best of whatever that may be. Then again, I’ve never been to a Bears game. I can’t spend that kind of money.

At least not on the Bears.

“Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter,” 2 p.m. Nov. 19 and 7 p.m. Nov. 21 at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave.; musicboxtheatre.com. Distributed by Greenwich Entertainment, “Love, Charlie” is now available on most major VOD platforms, with DVDs also on sale Nov. 22.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

[email protected]

Twitter @phillipstribune

Big screen or home stream, takeout or dine-in, Tribune writers are here to steer you toward your next great experience. Sign up for your free weekly Eat. Watch. Do. newsletter here .

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Charlie Trotter Documentary Trailer Shows a Chef Oblivious to His Influence

Watch this exclusive trailer for “Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter”

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The pandemic may have delayed plans for the theatrical release of a documentary about legendary Chicago chef Charlie Trotter, but soon the general public will finally get to see the film. Critics have already screened Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter with the Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper gushing , giving the movie 3 1 ⁄ 2 stars.

The movie, written and directed by Rebecca Halpern, was lauded as it made its way through the festival circuit last year. The film shows Trotter’s ascension to an internationally known chef and as a kitchen leader whose anger vexed his staff. Trotter’s Lincoln Park restaurant was a culinary destination from 1987 to 2012. The chef died in 2013. Anthony Bourdain and Julia Child make appearances in the film. Several high-profile Chicago chefs including Grant Achatz (Alinea), the late Homaro Cantu (Moto), Giuseppe Tentori ( GT Fish & Oyster ), and Graham Elliot worked in Trotter’s kitchen.

In this exclusive trailer, viewers will hear from Trotter and some of the world’s most famous chefs. Emeril Lagasse and Wolfgang Puck share their thoughts on their friend. Achatz is featured prominently in the trailer as Alinea is located more or less around the corner from his former stomping grounds.

“He was the puppeteer — he figured out a way to get what he wanted from all of us,” Achatz says in the trailer, adding: “Nobody appreciates legacy, and if you’re not on top in that moment, you just don’t matter.”

Greenwich Entertainment will release the movie on November 18 in theaters and on video on demand on the same date. Check out the trailer below.

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Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter (2021)

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Love, Charlie is a documentary film that profiles the life and work of legendary Chef Charlie Trotter and his pivotal role in revolutionizing the culinary world.

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With exclusive access to never-before-seen archival material, LOVE, CHARLIE reveals how his pursuit of excellence ultimately consumed him, with devastating consequences.

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The rise and fall of chef Charlie Trotter, who revolutionized American cuisine and paved the way for today’s celebrity chefs. His eponymous Chicago restaurant was one of the world’s top dining destinations. With exclusive access to never-before-seen material, the film reveals Trotter’s relentless pursuit of excellence. Featuring Anthony Bourdain, Grant Achatz, Emeril Lagasse, and Wolfgang Puck.

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• Aspect Ratio ‏ : ‎ 1.78:1
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• Director ‏ : ‎ Rebecca Halpern
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• Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 36 minutes
• Release date ‏ : ‎ November 22, 2022
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Wolfgang Puck, Emeril Lagasse, Grant Achatz
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‘charlie’ is a feel-good movie, but it does not stop there. it plays around brilliantly with raw emotions centred around a character who wants to be free..

At a time when more and more Malayalam films that hinge on a young cast have been about ‘finding meaning in life’ (as they say), ‘Charlie’, the latest offering from Martin Prakkat, takes a similar plot ahead and ties it with powerful threads of love and compassion.

Yes, ‘Charlie’ is a feel-good movie, but it does not stop there. It plays around brilliantly with raw emotions centred around a character who wants to be free like the wind and bring smiles on peoples’ faces. ‘Charlie’ ( Dulquer Salmaan ) is a vagabond who, dressed in Bohemian attire, flits from one place to another doing good deeds and cementing a spot in the hearts of those he meets. Following him in what becomes a wild goose chase is Tessa (Parvathy), an animated young graphic designer who runs out of her home to realize her dreams. It is when Tessa moves into a dingy old room that was once occupied by ‘Charlie’ and chances upon an incomplete story that the film picks up pace. Bit by bit, page by page, ‘Tessa’ begins to discover wacky and strange stories about ‘Charlie’ and finds herself attracted to the charms of a man whom she has never met. Along the way, there are several characters that range from a goat-herder to a boatman who guide ‘Tessa’ on her way to finding ‘Charlie’.

More than anything, it is the cinematography coupled with some intelligent storytelling that brings out the best flavours in the movie. The scenes are shot in the gorgeous of locations, from far-reaching tea gardens to a greyish town that sits on the coast of the Arabian Sea. A melodious background score from Gopi Sunder blends in well.

For a film that gravitates and leans too much on the central character, Dulquer clearly does not disappoint. On the back of a string of strong performances in ‘Ustad Hotel’, ‘ Bangalore Days’ and ‘ABCD’, Dulquer or ‘Kunjikka’ as he is lovingly called by his fans, has set the bar indeed high with this role. Complementing perfectly is Parvathy as the girl looking for love, her eyes shining with hope and her dreams unfettered. Aparna Gopinath, KPSC Lalitha, Nedumudi Venu, Kalpana play out roles that revolve around the love story, but whose individual parts are critical to the movement of the film.

For a plot that has oodles of humour but most importantly stays true in its course, Martin Prakkat along with Unni R, who co-wrote the script, must be applauded for crafting a film that entertains as well as deliberates on the art of leading a happy life. If you haven’t watched it yet, go catch it now.

Cast: Dulquer Salmaan, Parvathy, Aparna Gopinath, Nedumudi Venu

Direction: Martin Prakkat

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Love Lies Bleeding review – Kristen Stewart keeps it real in deliciously lurid outlaw romance

Rose Glass’s follow-up to her acclaimed Saint Maud is a scorchingly sexy, darkly violent tale of a gym manager’s love affair with a bodybuilder

T his may seem an unexpected point to make about an actor who is arguably one of the coolest people on the planet, but the key to Kristen Stewart ’s mesmerising screen presence is her ordinariness. I don’t mean her looks, although as Lou, the manager of a bodybuilding gym in an insalubrious New Mexico backwater, Stewart’s natural magnetism is somewhat muted behind a whey powder pallor, an air of defeated weariness and hair that looks as if it’s been deep-fried rather than washed.

Rather, it’s the unstudied, naturalistic quality of her performances, which are seeded with little glitchy details and gestures – the way she rakes her fingers through her fringe; the moment when she nervously wipes her nose on the sleeve of her T-shirt. Small things, perhaps, but these seemingly unconscious tics humanise her characters. They are recognisable, relatable moments of social awkwardness that anchor her in (or at least near) the real world. It’s a quality that adds to all her performances, but which is particularly invaluable in British director Rose Glass’s second picture, the deliciously lurid and thrillingly degenerate outlaw romance Love Lies Bleeding . When the rest of the movie launches itself headlong into outlandish, almost cartoonish excess, Lou is plausibly three-dimensional and grounded. The rooted realism that underpins Stewart’s performance offers a necessary balance to some of the more untrammelled impulses in Glass’s follow-up to her impressive debut feature, Saint Maud (2020).

Another significant asset is newcomer Katy O’Brian, who shoulders what is probably the most demanding role in the film. Jackie is a bodybuilder from the kind of Godfearing midwestern farming country that views a “muscle chick” as an unnatural abomination. Blowing into Lou’s grim home town, more a collection of strip malls and casual violence than a functioning community, Jackie decides to hole up for a while and earn some money while she prepares for a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas.

She is a magnificent creature, glistening with confidence and physical assurance. It’s no wonder that Lou gawps across the gym, mouth agape, when she catches sight of Jackie, with her dark honey tan and a swarm of men preening around her. Eager to impress the new arrival later that evening, Lou scurries off into the office to fetch a box of steroid shots; she lays them in front of Jackie like an offering to a deity. The relationship that ignites between them is sweaty, grubby and scorching hot, but as the steroids do their work, warping and distorting Jackie’s body and her mind, a savage, self-destructive, simmering violence creeps into their romance.

And this is where Lou’s sister Beth (Jena Malone) and her husband, JJ (Dave Franco), come in. At first glance the pair seem to be woefully underwritten, schematic cardboard cutouts rather than layered characters. She’s the battered wife; he’s the short-fused bully who takes out his inadequacy on his spouse. Concern for Beth’s safety is why Lou can’t bring herself to leave this spiteful small town, despite numerous reasons to do so (first of these being her gun-toting estranged father, played with reptilian menace by Ed Harris). But I suspect that Glass intends Beth and JJ to be more than just the dramatic device that unleashes the film’s dark heart and violent impulses. They also serve as a kind of twisted mirror image of Lou and Jackie’s amour fou and a cautionary warning that any relationship this thoroughly soaked in blood can’t, ultimately, end well, however invincible the partnership and the passion that drives it might seem at the time.

And there’s a whole lot of blood, in a movie that embraces full-bore nastiness on every level. With the lip-smacking relish that she brings to the body-horror elements of the picture, and the sickening, sinewy crunches in the sound design, Glass ranks alongside the French director of Titane , Julia Ducournau , as one of the most exciting film-makers working in genre cinema. Both she and Ducournau share a heady, freewheeling independence in their approach and a healthy resistance to genre conventions. Both combine an appetite for gruesome excess with an impressive intellectual rigour.

Love Lies Bleeding won’t be for everyone. I’ve watched it twice, and it plays rather better to an up-for-it, late-night audience than it does at 11am on a Sunday morning. But this is a movie that will find its people. And once it does, cult status is more or less assured.

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