Recensioni de* critic*

The food metaphors pile up like layers of an overstuffed sandwich in “A Touch of Spice,” a wistful Greek film by Tassos Boulmetis that wants to achieve the kind of emotional impact that makes even cynics weep. It’s too carefully constructed for that, but it does have some sweet touches and a droll sense of humor.

With all this food fetishism in full view, it is sometimes hard for Boulmetis to get a fix on his story line. But there is an autobiographical impulse underlying the project: a desire to bear witness to the history of Greeks who lived in Istanbul and were forced, in the 1950s, to relocate to Greece . The plaintive cry of the exile fills A Touch of Spice: in no place do these characters ever truly feel at home or accepted as locals.