Event

"Frontier's 2011 Best Of Series": Toast

Directed by SJ Clarkson
Starring Freddie Highmore, Helena Bonham Carter,
English
1 hr 36 mins, rated NR

Based on the heart-wrenchingly bittersweet story of food writer Nigel Slater's childhood, and set to the songs of Dusty Springfield, TOAST is a delicious love letter to the tastes and smells that a young boy
associates with his journey into adulthood.

No ordinary boy, Nigel, laps up cookbooks, spending all his time gazing longingly at the delights on offer in Percy Salt's grocers. Nigel's father, meanwhile, worries that there is something "wrong" with his son and the two find it difficult to connect. Nigel finds it far easier relating to Josh, the gardener, who teaches Nigel about the wonders of nature as they sit munching freshly picked radishes and pork pies. After Nigel's mother dies, leaving Nigel and his father heartbroken, the two struggle on fuelled by cheese on toast, until a saucy new cleaner who makes lemon meringue pies to die for, (played with gusto by Helena Bonham Carter), arrives. She sets her sights on Nigel's father, and cooking soon becomes the key weapon in the battle between then for his father's affections.