Behind the Scenes of The Hundred-Foot Journey: It takes a village

Updated: 6/10/2014: After I posted the trailer for The Hundred Foot Journey and shared it over at Paulita Kincer's Dreaming of France meme yesterday, Paulita connected me with Sally Tharpe Rowles, one of her Dreaming of France followers. Sally, a Bostonian who recently relocated to South Carolina, Sally summers in France every year and was on hand when the film crew descended on the tiny and exquisite French village of St. Antonin to start production last summer. Thankfully Sally shared the experience, taking us on a fascinating behind the scenes journey. I've loved reading her account, this link will take you to her first post, when she discovers the acclaimed Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom is going to be shooting some sort of film in the little village with Helen Mirren starring and Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg producing. 

Helen Mirren stars as Madame Mallory in this culinary tale.

And her second post where she meets a young Swedish woman who is in France with her husband while he is shooting a feature. Sally has been kind enough to allow me to share her pictures, and I'll be linking to her posts over the coming weeks but please give Sally's blog Between here and there a look. 

The cinematographer for the film is Swedish lenser Linus Sandgren - quite possibly the husband of the woman Sally met- who shot American Hustle. Production designer David Gropman (Life of Pi, Chocolat) was in charge of the film's overall look, with set decorator Marie-Laure Valle charged with transforming the village. We'll take a close up look at that transformation next time; this picture from Sally shows some crew members moving a facade into place over an existing structure. Don't you wish all remodeling projects could be so simple?

Updated 6/11/2014 The post is corrected to show that Oprah Winfrey is co-producing the The Hundred-Foot Journey with Steven Spielberg.