Sweet Störy
(Sweden/UK/USA, 72 min.)
Dir/Prod. Sarah Justine Kerruish, Matt Maude
What is the baker’s equivalent for the adage about the grass being greener on the other side? Perhaps the sugar always tastes sweeter from someone else’s pantry. That seems to be the case for San Francisco pastry wizard Meg Ray. The chef behind the Bay Area’s popular bakery chain Miette finds inspiration of the Eat, Pray, Love variety when she reads about a remote café in the Baltic Sea that sounds too deliciously romantic to pass up. Sweet Störy delivers a scrumptious foodie doc as Ray cooks up a storm in Sweden and turns a traditional bakery into a collision of cultures. It’s great comfort food for anyone feeling a little peckish for some life advice.
The fateful destination for Ray’s travels is Café Truten. The bakery sits on the Swedish island of Rödlöga, about a four-hour ferry ride from Stockholm through the picturesque Baltic Sea. Ray’s research introduces her to this cute little café that fuels the economy on Rödlöga. Local kids work there during the summers as a rite of passage. Veterans pass recipes and techniques down to ensure generational continuity. Ray makes a visit, hoping to cleanse her soul and embrace a new challenge to keep Miette fresh.
Rödlöga offers a true contrast to the rat race of San Francisco. The island has many quirks one expects from a remote location with seasonal living. Houses don’t have electricity, so residents and visitors dine by candlelight, although the sun only sets for a few minutes in the summer of constant daylight. Meanwhile, the local outhouses have strict rules about peeing and pooing in different holes, which Ray admits poses one of the island’s bigger challenges. Deadly vipers slither along the dirt path that runs through the village. It’s rustic living at its finest, as warm and crusty as sourdough bread.
Shot with an eye for natural light and edited with a cadence that reflects the unhurried pace of life in Rödlöga, Sweet Störy conveys the balm that Ray finds on the island. The portrait of rustic life embraces the artisanal even if it occasionally leans into the self-congratulatory. Directors Sarah Justine Kerruish and Matt Maude lean into the hand-crafted and old-fashioned nature of the island, rather than offer a romantic view. It’s slice-of-life viewing that really knows how to capture a slice of bread just right.
However, Ray finds that the romantic bubble pops pretty quickly. This lifestyle is as tough as it is rejuvenating. As Ray tells her story, mostly through casually shot direct address interviews, she admits that the bakery has no real business plan to sustain its history of tried and tested pastry recipes. The seasonal living leaves the place in a state of modest disrepair, as dust and debris accumulate during the winter. Mice, meanwhile, take refuge in whatever bags of ingredients may have been left over the season. Ray gets only one week to evict the mice and get the bakery shipshape.
There’s only one week from opening to Midsummer, the island’s main event and a boon for the business. The latter point proves especially significant as residents on the island share the profits of Café Truten. It’s therefore more than a place to satisfy one’s sweet tooth. It’s a social and economic lifeline. But Sweet Störy plays with the tried and tested recipe of the race-against-time doc as the community rallies for another opening.
The charm of the place motivates Ray to return, though. A chance visit becomes an annual pilgrimage. Sweet Störy follows her over the years as she whips the bakery into shape. She creates a business plan and shifts the bakery to sustainable practices that minimize food waste and reduce costs. She challenges herself to make sourdough breads, something she’s never done at Miette, but hopes can add a steady stream of business to the bakery and the local shop it supplies. But the bakery’s wonky oven and the island’s unpredictable weather invite new challenges.
The filmmakers invite several of the Rödlöga locals to share their perspectives about what the café means and how Ray’s annual volunteer trips during the summer inspire them with equal measure. While she loves the Swedish baking tips, they learn from her American business savvy. Particularly colourful is the shopkeeper Maria Thomsson. She boasts a warm and jovial demeanour that one hopes to find in an inviting face upon arrival. Meanwhile, several of young hands in the bakery also inspire Ray as much as she nurtures them. The generational exchange fuels her.
The sumptuously shot doc should inspire a few trips to Sweden and a baker’s dozen visits to one’s local patisserie. Sweet Störy offers warm and inspiring advice for foodies and audiences who love visiting far-flung places through film. But regardless of one’s aptitude in the kitchen, the baker’s food for thought offers accessible and relatable perspective.
Ray finds a great metaphor in the sourdough starter that challenges her daily. Like the starter, she says the bakery needs to be fed and observed. Feeding the starter compares to knowledge transfer, and there’s an equally useful lesson in the image of getting one’s hands deep into the bread, kneading it into shape, and relishing the smell as it bakes in the oven. When time comes to open the bakery for the season, Ray doesn’t cut a ribbon. She whacks a baguette over the stair’s railing. Is there a better metaphor for life and community than breaking bread?
