Light family saga has a dash of spirit

If you want a leg up at the Greek box office, make a movie about food and politics. And if you bring that movie to America, emphasize the food.

''A Touch of Spice" is the 2003 film that shattered domestic records and won a pile of awards in Greece, where it was released under the title ''Politiki Kouzina," a play on words that can mean either ''political kitchen" or ''Constantinople kitchen." Written and directed by Tassos Boulmetis (''The Dream Factory"), this work is a sentimental feast that's part family saga, part history lesson, and part live-action cookbook, all assembled with the intent of capturing your heart through your stomach -- not a bad strategy in cinema, if memory serves.

We all have our favorite food movies from a list that includes ''Big Night," ''Like Water for Chocolate," and ''Eat Drink Man Woman." ''A Touch of Spice" is cut from the same basic pastry dough, but unlike the best of those films, Boulmetis's confection is better at making you salivate for supper than at making you care about characters and events. It's also weighed down by too many food-themed proverbs along the lines of ''if a diplomat smells of garlic, trouble is stirring."

In a story that hangs on a familiar framework, handsome Georges Corraface plays Fanis, a professor of astrophysics who also has advanced culinary skills ignited as a child in his grandfather's Istanbul spice shop. Fanis now lives in Athens, and his grandpa (Tassos Bandis) is supposedly coming for a long-overdue visit (cue the big-meal preparation). Only the old man never arrives.

This sparks a flashback to 1959 -- the section of the film unnecessarily labeled ''The Appetizers" -- wherein we learn that Fanis and his parents were deported from Turkey during regional tensions in the 1960s because his dad (Ieroklis Michaelidis) is a Greek citizen. Fanis's mother (Renia Louizidou) takes with her the secrets of her family's cuisine, and she is therefore central to the film's delightful debates about culinary superiority, including whether cinnamon belongs in the meatballs.

Young Fanis (played by Markos Osse) leaves behind a Turkish girlfriend whom his grandfather promises to bring along when he visits. If he visits.

The ''Main Course" of the film is the life that Fanis and his parents share in Athens, where the young boy grows into a fabulous cook, despite his father's pronouncements that this will make him a ''pansy." ''The Desserts" section is where Fanis returns to Istanbul (formerly known as Constantinople) and revisits all that he left behind as a lad. If this really is dessert, it's a bittersweet selection, but Boulmetis's contrived menu construction doesn't hold up anyway, so don't let it distract you.

The strengths of this film are its culinary/cultural history and sumptuous cinematography, plus the passion with which Boulmetis integrates cooking and life. The story is said to be semi-autobiographical, and the writer-director's affinity for it shows. So even if scenes outside the kitchen feel a bit too artificial, and you aren't especially taken in by the story or performances, you can still walk away feeling satisfied enough.

Janice Page can be reached at jpage22@hotmail.com.