The ingredients are simple, the cooking process is not that stressful, and the history is rich. In director Stephen Chbosky's sensual drama "nonnas", Italian cuisine comes from not professionally trained chefs but from women of Italian heritage whose flavors are perfected over generations. Each fork pays homage to their source and to those who love them. Some of the components of the film are indeed real: Liz Maccie's script provides fictional insights into how Jody Scaravella opened an authentic Italian restaurant, Enoteca Maria, with her grandmother's chef.
MTA worker Joe (Vince Vaughn) just lost his mother. The opening sequence shows that he observed his mother and “Nona” (or grandmother) cooking feasts for friends and family as a child. Those peaceful days seem to be soaked in ethereal lighting to convey nostalgia. Currently, when everyone leaves the funeral, the dishes they prepare for him are still an edible manifestation of their feelings. However, his Sunday gravy from Nonna is the taste he misses the most, and this taste is so specific that it seems impossible to replicate without an actual recipe. Joe quickly declares that cooking is an expression of love, a central theme of the regular saccharin, an occasionally touching story.
When his lifelong pall bruno (Joe Manganiello) and his wife Stella (Drea de Matteo) suggest that he use his mother's insurance to change his life, Joe invites Nonnas' quartet to become the chef of a new restaurant, he plans to open on Staten Island: Enoteca Maria: Enoteca Maria. There is Roberta (Lorraine Bracco), his mother's freakish body best friend. A Craigslist ad brings former nuns Teresa (Talia Shire) and Antonella (Brenda Vaccaro), a meaningless Sicilian. As for the dessert, Joe convinced his mother's hair salon, Susan Sarandon, to lend his talents to the business.
Casting these women is a celebration of Italian American culture in itself, as some of them appear in several of the most famous films and center on this particular ethnic community: Bracco starred in "Goodfellas" and "The Sopranos", while Shire plays the "Godfather" and "Rocky" films. Her neighbor, Linda Cardellini, along with Antonella, is Joe's high school lover who further packs the plot with romantic clues as if forced to insert to make Vaughan's character secondary, even on the hatred he devotes to his mother,
Despite Vaughn's conversations being full of cliches, the actor's daily sincerity keeps the boundaries as possible. One thinks he is a normal blue-collar guy with a soft character inside. Elsewhere, MacCie's script ends up feeling like it integrates all the loose sub-pictures into an unnatural whole, including a letter left by Joe's mother, and the concept that Staten Island locals might be upset about opening a restaurant outsiders. The ordeal almost all the way to the end is coated with classic Italian songs as well as English repertoire that talk about the immigration experience in New York City.
"Nonas" found the richest moment when experienced actresses shared screens to Bicker about specific areas of Italy, who think their homeland or think about mistakes in the past. Sarandon admires the tailored characters to become the most stylish and forward-looking one. Her character owns a hair salon that plays a role in scenes where Nonnas drinks lemoncello and traps of dead husbands, escaped lovers or raising children. Their candid drama allows the film to live up to its title and make them the protagonists, similar to what "Tea with Lady" or the most recent "80 for Brady" did for their main ladies.
As a food-centric film, "Nonnas"'s sauces, soups and meat close-up dishes are put together by experienced chefs, but with their origins or meaninglessness in a larger cultural or historical context. The use of food is not a main course, but as a tool to explore the bonds of the family, note the tone and thoughts of María Ripoll's "Tortilla Soup" about the Mexican-American chef and his three daughters. "Nonas" repeatedly takes its own unification power as a unified force embodied by the community, even if it is lost with too many unnecessary condiments, so the result is ultimately delicious.