It is often said to filmmakers that the best story to follow is often one they can only tell themselves, which had posed a unique dilemma for Karim Raoul when it has long required him to put down the camera. The son of a restauranteur in New York, he makes it clear that running Raoul’s, a legendary French bistro, was never something he wanted to be a part of and instead sought to travel the world as a documentarian, experiencing everything that was unfamiliar from the life he grew up around. Yet still, he was ready to put aside his own ambitions at a moment’s notice upon learning that his father Serge had a stroke, requiring him to come back to the eatery that gave the family its livelihood. From “Raoul’s: A New York Story,” it appears that it wasn’t always obvious to Karim that there was a great movie right in front of him as he can be seen sitting down in 2012 for an interview with his friend Greg Olliver, a co-director on the eventual film, disappointed in being tethered to a career he strenuously avoided, but even he can’t ignore that Raoul’s has a heck of a story behind it.
At a time when there is no shortage of food-related documentaries, “Raoul’s” stands out for its personal touch when it would be easy to coast on its multiple points of broader historical interest alone. The SoHo hotspot that opened in the 1970s witnessed the transformation of the neighborhood around it – and likely helped spur it — from a Bohemian haven for artists when old buildings were rented out for pennies on the dollar when the city was considered a cesspool to a destination for luxury brands once it became too cool and became a proving ground for chefs such as Thomas Keller, Tom Colicchio and Andrew Zimmern, becoming a landmark in the culinary scene. However, all that may not even be the most interesting part of “Raoul’s” when Karim’s return to New York mirrored in many ways his father’s own path to opening the restaurant in the first place after Serge initially worked behind the camera as part of a team that traveled the world making mini documentaries for French television before the work dried up and he decided to start a restaurant with his brother Guy, who always could cook.
“Raoul’s” becomes the ultimate “life is what happens when you’re making other plans” tale as it tracks Karim and Serge’s parallel experiences of wrestling with their sense of purpose in the midst of relating the restaurant’s lively history where performers and patrons are encouraged to dance on the bar late into the evening. Many credit the atmosphere to Serge having a filmmaker’s eye for decor and an open heart to artists, creating a hip customer base as well as a staff that all had creative pursuits in their off-hours and ultimately enrich the documentary when so much of how they captured the place in photos and Super 8 films becomes part of the fabric.
The film also makes unusually poignant use of Karim and Serge’s documentary footage when the latter began to film in Bali and formed a friendship with so strong with a local that he named his son after Karim and his namesake keeps in touch with him throughout the years, in some sense completing what his father had to give up when starting the restaurant when he continues to travel to Bali with a camera. A sequence that really shouldn’t work but does involves Karim Raoul describing his own occasionally fraught relationship with his father in voiceover while using visual material collected from Bali focusing on the other Karim and his, and when so much of “Raoul’s” is concerned with sliding doors and seemingly unfulfilled desires, there is considerable beauty in finding value in other experiences that wouldn’t seem applicable to current goals to help achieve them as the main subjects have throughout the years in making Raoul’s, the restaurant, such a vital place. In Raoul and Olliver’s passionate portrait, it’s the unexpected that ultimately makes it so rich in flavor.
“Raoul’s, A New York Story” will screen again at the Tribeca Festival at the AMC 19th St. East 6 on June 11th at 5:45 pm and June 15th at 2 pm.