Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles

You can go to Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles for the delectable excess, but you’ll stick around for the quiet, cautionary notes between bites.

For such a sweet film, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles evolves into a complex exploration of the symbiotic relationship between money and art, and questions what the visibility of that conspicuous consumption could portend.

Ultimately the results are eye-popping, sometimes almost confoundingly so.

Watching Ottolenghi’s achievement from the other side of a screen only serves to reaffirm his point that looking at the world isn’t the same as feeling it on your tastebuds. A more nuanced documentary — one that didn’t just feel like evidence of an event that happened at a museum, but a work of art unto itself — might have made a meal out of such ideas, rather than just offering them for dessert.

At 75 minutes, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles goes down easily but lacks a distinctive flavor.

In its attempt to cram too many narratives and subjects into too short of a running time, it ends up coming across as both overstuffed and oddly undernourished.

If what you want is a fancier episode of The Great British Baking Show, then you'll "ooh" and "ah" at all the right moments as Ottolenghi assembles his kitchen of world-class patisserie chefs and jelly experts.