In the Nguyen Kitchen review – cooking up a heartwarming Vietnamese

P aris is home to one of the oldest and largest Vietnamese diasporas in the world – not that you could tell from mainstream French cinema. In this heartwarming feature debut, Stéphane Ly-Cuong turns to the magic of the musical comedy to portray not only the dreams and the struggles of Vietnamese-French artists, but also a side of Paris seldom seen on screen.

A hopeful performer and singer, Yvonne Nguyen (Clotilde Chevalier) can’t help but dream in songs. Her candy-coloured reveries unfold like a Jacques Demy fantasy, bursting with tunes and light. In reality, however, she is stuck belting out jingles for spring rolls to indifferent supermarket customers. Without much luck getting cast in acting roles, Yvonne moves back in with her mother (Anh Tran-Nghia), who runs a restaurant in the out