Stephen Rea and Fionnula Flanagan are to star in award-winning Spanish director Roger Gual’s romantic ensemble comedy ‘Tasting Menu,’ which will begin shooting in Spain later this month before relocating to Ireland.
The feature, originally titled ‘Menú Degustació,’ will be co-produced by Dublin-based production company Subotica Entertainment and Zentropa Spain, the Spanish arm of Danish director Lars von Trier’s Zentropa Entertainment, on a budget of €2.9million.
David Matamoros is producing for Zentropa International Spain alongside Irish co-producer Tristan Orpen Lynch for Subotica. Peter Garde, Peter Aalbæk Jensen and Susanna Jiménez are executive producers.
‘Tasting Menu’ is described as “a romantic ensemble comedy devoted to the beauty of love, food and the Mediterranean way of life”.
The shoot will get underway on Monday May 28 at the Hostal Empúries at L'Escala in Costa Brava, which is in the Spanish province of Girona, to the north of Barcelona.
It will shoot for a number of weeks in Spain before the production moves to Ireland for four or five days towards the end of June.
Gual, who won numerous awards for his 2002 debut ‘Smoking Room’ and his 2006 feature ‘Remake,’ will direct the story from a script he co-wrote with Javier Calvo. The ensemble cast includes Jan Cornet (The Skin I Live In), Claudia Bassols (Emulsion) and Togo Igawa (Memoirs Of A Geisha).
‘Tasting Menu’ will use a mostly Spanish crew and will be shot on a RED Epic camera on 35mm. It will be shot in English and Catalan and run for approximately 100 minutes, with a planned release date for next spring. Denmark-based Trust Nordisk will handle international sales.
The film’s synopsis reads as: “It’s been a year since Marc and Rachel booked a table at the best restaurant in the world, situated in an idyllic cove of Costa Brava. When it turns out that the booking is on the same date as the last night before the restaurant closes forever, their booking becomes even more important. The thing is just that Marc and Rachel are no longer together. They have been separated for a year and not seen each other during that time. Not willing to miss this unique culinary event, however, they both decide to meet at the restaurant – and it becomes a night of nothing you would have expected.”
