In the last two years, the National Restaurant Assn. estimates that roughly 90,000 restaurants have experienced a long-term shutdown or permanent closure due to the pandemic.
Belle Vie, the charming French bistro tucked between a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a McDonald’s along a West L.A. stretch of Wilshire Boulevard, was one of them — but you’d never know it by Vincent Samarco’s disposition.
Throughout pivots, personal loss, bankruptcy and near-constant roadblocks and red tape, the Parisian never seems to lose his sense of humor. “I think if the restaurant industry doesn’t work for me, I could definitely be Santa — I mean my beard is starting to be white already,” Samarco says in another scene, strapping a Christmas tree to the roof of his little green truck.
At times, the documentary feels more like an artifact than a film, providing a front-row seat to one of the most trying eras in restaurant history — from Belle Vie’s early takeout-only days of fitting a whole branzino into a small aluminum takeout box with half a lemon and flipping the wine list to retail, to an attempt at welcoming diners back onsite by adding stylish deep-blue plexiglass between booths and constructing a patio himself.
Fans of Samarco’s neighborhood restaurant — where the walls were littered with art given by regulars and where weekly live music came pouring out the doors — already know the ending, or at least the ending for the bistro: Belle Vie permanently closed in December 2020. We see Samarco removing the artworks from the walls, one by one, a collection assembled piece by piece over the years; a customer’s sketch of the owner behind the bar, photos of his family and friends in France.
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