Life imitates art more often than you'd think, with films like Wag the Dog eerily pre-empting real events, but each time it happens, it's kind of surprising. When director Hugh Farley of Espresso Films dreamed up the smashing title of his new short film, Last Mango in Dublin, he little knew that the plot of his film would be echoed in real-life Dublin. The title came to Hugh as he tried to decide what dessert to create out of a mango in the home he shares with his partner in both business and life, producer Karen Edmonds. What dish that mango ended up in is unrecorded but the title sparked off a film short that showed in both the national and international short film competitions in the Cork Film Festival this week.
"I was trying to think what set of circumstances would make the last mango to be had in Dublin quite so important," recalls Hugh. What he came up with was a pair of inspectors from the Michelin guide, a chi-chi Dublin restaurant, a temperamental chef and an absent mango. Jake, the pastry chef played by Paul Roe, is accompanied on his chase around Dublin in search of the missing fruit by a rousing Latino music soundtrack and a ridiculous amount of coincidences. But if those coincidences seem unlikely, they're nothing like the one that happened in real life. Last Mango in Dublin was shot in Morel's Restaurant in Glasthule in Dublin, with most of the chefs starring as themselves in walk-on -or rather cook-on - parts. Karen Edmonds takes up the tale: "On the second last day of shooting we had to clear everything up and change it back into a restaurant as there were real customers due in. When I arrived in later that night to check everything was OK, they couldn't wait to tell me - there was a real Michelin inspector in to check out the restaurant that night. He was sitting there eating on his own, little knowing that the coats of our Michelin guide actors were hanging beside his on the coat rack."
This is a foodie's film - as Karen says seriously, "The food had to perform". Pans fly, veg is chopped, and intricate dishes, created by Morel's head chef, John Dunne, fly out of the kitchen. The Morel's chefs all took time out to teach the actors how to cook and chop properly. "You can't pretend a kitchen. It had to look realistic." says Edmonds.
For Hugh Farley it was the combination of two loves, food and film. A New York University film school graduate who recently won an award at this year's Celtic Film Festival for his documentary for the BBC, We Shall Overcome, Hugh is a self-confessed foodie. He grew up surrounded by food - his father owned a few Dublin restaurants, including the Grey Door and Champers, and his mother was a fine cook. "I used to help out in the kitchens and was always fascinated watching professional chefs cook" he says, but concedes that the film also gently pokes fun at die-hard food snobs. "I love food but there's a huge amount of people out there who like good food but don't fetishise asparagus. When it gets to a stage when it's more important how food looks than what it tastes like, it's not a good idea."
Farley also indulged another of his passions in the making of Last Mango in Dublin - the paintings of Graham Knuttel. "I've loved his work for many years. They always seemed to me to be made up of a very un-Irish set of colours and themes. But now many restaurants in town like La Stampa and Eden are actually beginning to look like Nuttel paintings. It's a whole part of contemporary Ireland that nobody is putting on screen."
To get the effect, director of photography, Ronan Fox, used an unusual palette of yellows, lime greens and blues, while head chef, Duffy (Chris McHallem) is pure Knuttel, with his hat, beard and demonic eyes. McHallem also plays the chef as a temperamental lunatic, but having spent time in kitchens around Dublin as research, Farley insists it's realistic. "John Dunne said it wasn't extreme enough. Working in the kitchens of some of these top chefs is like a survival course."
Last Mango in Dublin is now making its way to the New York Short Film festival in November and Espresso hopes that it will turn up on television too. In yet another case of life imitating art, chef John Dunne has said he is prepared to re-create the menu from the film in Morel's - including the all-important dessert, Mango Passion. That's all supposing he can find the mangos, of course.