01/06/2012 - The Danish production company's Spanish subsidiary, headed by David Matamoros, is to film Spanish-Irish co-production Menú degustación in six weeks.

This Monday, Catalan director Roger Gual started shooting his third feature, and his second feature directing alone, after Smoking Room (co-directed by Julio D. Wallovits with whom he won the Goya for best novel director in 2002) and Remake [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2006). Menú degustación (lit. "Degustation menu") is to be an ensemble comedy set to a backdrop of romance and gastronomy.

This Spanish (Zentropa Spain and TVC) and Irish (Subotica) co-production should be filmed in six weeks at the Hostal Empúries in l'Escala, Spain, and in Dublin.

In the film's screenplay, written by Gual and Javier Calvo and based on an idea by Silvia González Láa, Marc and Rachel manage to book a table in one of the world's best restaurants, in a corner of the Costa Brava, for one year later. But then they break up. The idea was to share one of the best sensory experiences of their lives with the restaurant's other guests. But what had promised to be the best date ever instead ends up being unforgettable for entirely different reasons.

Gual has explained that he wants "members of the audience to leave the cinema with the impression of having tasted a degustation menu and of having seen the stories that happened during these hours of eating the most exquisite food ever, just as they were told by the guests."

The film's strength lies in its colourful international cast, which includes Jan Cornet, Stephen Rea, Fionnula Flanagan, Timothy Gibbs, Marta Torné, Andrea Ros, Santi Millán, and Akihiko Serikawa.

Menú degustación is the third feature by the famous Danish production company's Spanish subsidiary headed by David Matamoros, who participated in this year's Producers on the Move in Cannes (read the interview). The producer has said that Gual is "a director open to new ideas, who is generous and has enormous talent".

"For me, it's a gift to work with him," he said. "So much so that we are already thinking of new projects to develop together."

(Translated from Spanish)