2023-10-13 08:07:00
Manuel Tamayo Prats is a sybarite. He knows how to distinguish whether what he is eating has kemiri oil or not; He hates the way they prepare coffee in Argentina (always full, always burnt), he is outraged by some culinary tricks in restaurants that claim to be Italian (like fake burrata, or some poorly made sauce).
He is a food critic, and as he says at the beginning of “Nada”, the series that is available on Star+ starting this Wednesday, his work is most enjoyed when he has to speak badly about the dish he has just tried. If the palate does not enjoy, his tongue becomes bitter and his criticisms are merciless.
Manuel Tamayo Prats, the character played by Luis Brandoni in the series by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, is a dandy who has fallen into disrepair. One of those elegant-looking men who no longer have a solid foundation on which to rest his enormous claims. A little because his time has begun to decline. Another, because, for example, he has spent the advance to write a book of which he has not written a single page in two years.
Before becoming the critic, he was a hippie, a rugby player, an alcoholic, an exile, a backpacker, an artist, everything,” as listed by his friend Vincent Parisi, a successful journalist and revered New York writer, Robert De Niro’s character who is the one who works as narrator of the seriesand friend of Manuel.
Tamayo Prats lives somewhere near the Riachuelo de Buenos Aires, in a house that, like him, shows signs of having seen better days. A house full of works of art that, due to imperative needs, he sells to be able to indulge himself in his dandy life: for example, Kemiri oil, which is no longer in his house, or Dijon mustard, or the loin with which he wants to entertain his friends.
But apart from his exquisite palate and a sharp tongue to define the dishes he tries, Tamayo Prats does not have many skills. In fact, for everything he needs to do every day – everything from waking up to taking his pills, or having breakfast prepared and what clothes to put on – he relies on Celsa (María Rosa Fugazot), who is a kind of housekeeper who even She takes care of giving him the money he needs daily to take a taxi or drink coffee.
The problem is that one day, Celsa is no longer there. And the dandy realizes that his refrigerator is empty and that he actually doesn’t know how to do anything.
A friend then advises her to hire a young Paraguayan immigrant, Antonia (Majo Cabrera), who needs the job, but who doesn’t know how to cook the complicated dishes she asks her to make. Tamayo is also exquisite in his kitchen and knows how to prepare – or rather command -, for example, the famous Clark-style loin.
That relationship, that of Manuel and Antonia, will be the emotional axis of the series. Because she, inexperienced, but kind and determined (she left her daughter in Paraguay and needs an urgent job), will be the involuntary architect of Tamayo’s transformation, she will make the usually acerbic Manuel recover a certain humanity, and she will even make him gain momentum to sit down to write that book long indebted to its editor.
The other axis is obviously Vicent Parisi (DE Niro), who opens each chapter talking about Manuel Tamayo Prats, or bife de chorizo on horseback, or bad words and other traits of the deepest Argentinianness.
His presence will be more forceful in the last chapter “Throw butter on the ceiling”, when we see the images that Brandoni and De Niro – friends in real life – filmed together in the streets of Buenos Aires.
The series from those responsible for “The Illustrious Citizen” and “The Man Next Door” bears in its five chapters the seal that characterizes them: humor, a careful aesthetic, very good music and excellent performances. But this time, Cohn and Duprat’s production does not take the path of cynicism to mock an elite (that of food critics in this case) and it does not place on the protagonist’s men the misanthropy that characterizes some of their creations.. No. “Nothing” marks a change in his creations because it revalues simplicity (the possibility of doing something with nothing) and also the relationships, of Tamayo and Antonia, or of Tamayo and Vincent, to demonstrate that only in that back and forth, you get the best menu.
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