Pressure Cooker

City Paper Grade: B

by Sam Adams

CUCUMBER COOL: Students from Frankford High compete for culinary scholarships in Pressure Cooker. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

[CITY PAPER GRADE: B]

Wilma Stephenson doesn't mess around. On the first day of her culinary arts class at Frankford High, she warns her students, Paper Chase style, "Everything you've heard about me is true, only it's worse than that." Part taskmaster, part tyrant, her rages can be genuinely frightening; even in the safety of a darkened theater, you may feel yourself flinch. One student's view that she has "bad people skills" doesn't begin to cover it.

Stephenson's opening salvo seems to have the desired effect, since the students who remain are willing not just to endure her tirades, but to come in on weekends and holidays, preparing for the year-end contest that rewards winners to places like the Culinary Institute of America. She may be terrifying, but she gets results.

Mark Becker and Jennifer Grausman's documentary is a straightforward inspirational-teacher tale — Grausman's father, Richard, founded the Careers Through Culinary Arts program that funds Stephenson's class, so it's not surprising that the film's approach is uniformly laudatory — but it's enlivened by uncommonly intriguing characters, including the three students the film focuses on: Tyree, an all-state tackle with eyes on a hotel-management career; Fatoumata, the first-generation daughter of a Malian father who treats her like an indentured servant; and Erica, a shy, sweet girl trying to balance her ambitions with the responsibility of caring for her blind sister.

That Pressure Cooker is entirely predictable detracts only slightly from its impact. The movie is best when it complicates its narrative uplift with a sense of the price leaving their economically depressed circumstances may entail. The violence with which Stephenson instructs her charges to "break the mentality of the McDonald's palate" is just a taste of what lies ahead.