Is food a form of art? “A Visual Ode to a Hare in the Woods”, a short film by Andrea Marini dedicated to the genius of Massimo Bottura, patron chef of the three Michelin-star Osteria Francescana in Modena, is the answer.

The title derives from “Camouflage: a hare in the woods”, the chef’s dish-symbol, that is broken down into all its ingredients and preparation phases in order to find out what is behind and inside a culinary artwork.

The film is divided into six acts: the absence of everything, a path in the woods, sins, purification, the absence of water and destroying to create, and it starts and ends with a close-up on the hieratic gaze of Bottura, who turns here into a mythical homo faber. The final scene is the setting of his most iconic recipe, where the dish is more reminiscent of a frame and the camouflage looks like the oil on canvas.

The film’s dark, sacred and dreamlike atmospheres take inspiration from the 16th century paintings as well as contemporary art, not without a reference to the most recent art cinema photography, from Ildikò Enyedi to Yorgos Lanthimos.