This documentary about Michelin-starred restaurant El Bulli doesn't dig deep enough

In some ways, it's a pleasure to see a documentary about a restaurant and a top chef that doesn't use the phoney-baloney word "passionate". This film, by the German director Gereon Wetzel, about the ultra-exclusive Michelin-starred restaurant El Bulli near Roses on the Costa Brava, doesn't go in for this kind of life-affirming schmaltz, but there is something frigid and opaque about it. At the end of every summer season, the restaurant's charismatic boss, Ferran Adrià, closes it down, and key staff retreat for a "research" period in which they will develop new tastes, new textures, new ideas. Adrià is candid about coming up with dishes which go beyond "tasting good". This is where cuisine merges with conceptual art: a new taste combination might trigger new thoughts and feelings, as well as just making us say: "Oooh, yummy." Without any voiceover,...