6 of the most captivating kitchens in modern movies

From Amélie to It’s Complicated — take a peek inside these memorable spaces.

From Amélie to It’s Complicated — take a peek inside these memorable spaces

Josh Korngut · CBC Life · Posted: Apr 20, 2023 2:53 PM EDT | Last Updated: April 20, 2023

A woman standing at a sink in a kitchen with her back to the camera. The kitchen features open shelving with dishes, a marble-topped island with rattan kitchen stools, with various fruit, dishes and desserts on the island, and pans hanging over the stove. — (Source: Universal Pictures)

"Happiness is a small house with a big kitchen." - Alfred Hitchcock

For many of us, the kitchen is the beating heart of our home, which makes it a particularly powerful setting in movies of every genre. This sacred room provides filmmakers the opportunity to share a range of stories from characters' most intimate lives. It also allows set designers to create some seriously memorable spaces.

Here are six captivating examples of the home kitchen from modern cinema, each with their own distinctive personality.

Practical Magic

2 women and a man sit at a kitchen table that's covered in a white tablecloth and has a wooden fruit bowl on it. Behind them are cupboards with glass doors, with glass dishes in them. Behind that is a stove in a tiled alcove with dishes on open shelves on either side of the stove. — (Source: Warner Bros.)

Not unlike a cauldron, the kitchen is where basic ingredients can be combined to create figurative (and sometimes literal) magic. This is especially true in the 1998 supernatural romance Practical Magic, which stars Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as sisters Sally and Gillian Owens, a pair of witches facing dark fates and terrible boyfriends.

The Owens family kitchen is one of Practical Magic's primary locations, as it's the place where the women come to cook, cast magical spells and just spend time together. In a 1998 interview with Victoria magazine, production design team Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch described the room as "the heart of the house."

With its cream-coloured cabinets and sunny windows, the space is bright and joyful. Still, it was important to Standefer and Alesch that the Owens's kitchen also called up images of authentic storybook witchery, stating that it purposefully "harks back to 17th-century English cottages," with a stove appearing at centre stage "almost like a shrine." Hansel and Gretel could only hope to stumble upon a place this nice.

It's Complicated

This list could easily be dominated by sets from Nancy Meyers's glistening filmography (think the cosy cottage kitchen in The Holiday and the pristine, luxurious space in Something's Gotta Give). But arguably, the pinnacle of Meyers's kitchens can be found in It's Complicated, her subversive 2009 divorce romp starring Meryl Streep as a successful bakery owner named Jane.

In its pre-renovated state, Jane's Santa Barbara, Calif., kitchen is already pretty dreamy, with its bright, airy atmosphere and elegant marble-topped island that seems to stretch on for days. But there are also hints that someone might actually live and cook there: ingredients, fruit and baked goods have been left out on the countertops, while open shelving offers Jane quick access to all the necessary tools to make a croque monsieur.

"It's totally attractive and comfortable but in a lived-in way," production designer Jon Hutman said of space when speaking with the Washington Post. "It's meant to be makeshift, but in a way that someone that has a strong sense of aesthetics would make it." Equal parts elevated and inviting, this kitchen is surely one any chef would crave access to.

Howl's Moving Castle

side by side images from animated film. left: a small child standing in front of a wooden table of cakes and cheese and bread. right: a woman in an old kitchen. it has wooden beams on a ceiling. a wooden table in the middle of the room. and an old-fashioned stone fireplace in the background — (Source: Studio Ghibli)

The depiction of food in films by world-famous Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli is often as entrancing as the movies themselves, and the animation in their 2004 adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones's novel Howl's Moving Castle is no different. In fact, the food and kitchen within the film's titular castle are what dreams are made of — if our minds could even conjure up something so vivid.

The story follows Sophie, a hatmaker, as she is transformed into an elderly woman by an evil witch and begins working for a mysterious wizard named Howl, helping him take care of his gigantic mobile castle and cooking for him. One of my favourite features of the castle's kitchen is a sink set in an arched alcove that's embellished with blue and white tiles. Still, the most remarkable aspect of the kitchen is its gorgeously animated food, full of vibrance and imagination.

Amélie

A woman standing in a small kitchen with red cabinets and a red and white checkered tile backsplash. A small red table sits in the middle. We're looking into the kitchen through a beaded curtain in the kitchen doorway. — (Source: Claudie Ossard Productions)

Set in a fairytale version of late-'90s Montmartre, France, Amélie follows its puckish title character as she searches for identity and romance, all while seeking to positively affect the lives of the eccentric strangers around her.

In the film, which hails from French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and features set design by Aline Bonetto, Amélie's kitchen echoes her eclectic spirit. Checkered tiles and a kitschy beaded curtain drench the room in retro charm, while a palette of sunset red and fern green gives the space a cosy, almost festive feeling.

This red-and-green motif permeates the rest of the film and, perhaps most iconically, its promotional material. Even the pots that hang over Amélie's tiny sink are the colour of the most delicious red pasta sauce you could ever imagine.

Take This Waltz

A man and a woman standing in an eclectic kitchen with green and red cabinets, and a vintage-style white fridge covered in magnets. The woman is pouring coffee into mugs and the man is holding a frying pan near the stove. — (Source: Mongrel Media)

A very different sort of romance, Sarah Polley's 2011 Take This Waltz stars Michelle Williams as Margot, a married writer who begins an affair with an attractive neighbour and watches her comfortable little snowglobe life start to crack as she falls in love with someone other than her husband.

The Toronto home Margot shares with her husband, Lou, is a physical manifestation of the cosy, settled life she'll have to leave behind in order to be true to herself. Speaking with Art Departmental, production designer Matthew Davies said that Polley made a casual reference to a bowl of fruit that was especially "helpful in defining the project's aesthetic parameters." It's fitting, then, that the vibe of the kitchen itself is bright, if a little overripe. With magnets lining the fridge and Lou's dishes filling the sink, it looks adorable but lived-in and messy, like the home of a couple 10 years their junior — or one stuck in arrested development.

Scream

A young woman stands at a kitchen island talking on a white, cordless phone. She's touching a knife in the knife block. Behind her are white kitchen cabinets with cookbooks and dishes visible. — (Source: Dimension Films)

1996's Scream features a kitchen that's memorable for a very different reason than the others on this list: it's the site of the film's iconic opening scare. In the scene, Drew Barrymore's character, Casey Becker — who audiences were expecting to be the film's final girl — receives a phone call from a stranger who becomes increasingly irate before breaking into her home. It's a frightening subversion of the call-is-calling-from-inside-the-house trope, with a large portion of the action occurring in the kitchen as Casey makes popcorn on her stovetop and leans over a large butcher-block island while discussing her favourite scary movies.

The quiet suburban energy of the Becker kitchen makes the terrible events unfolding there feel all the more realistic. The room features a '90s-specific pink tile backsplash, decorative rooster, gigantic stainless steel fridge and, of course, many sharp knives. It's easy to imagine yourself cooking Jiffy Pop there as you wait for your parents to come home with the Blockbuster rental. I just hope that they get there in time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Josh Korngut

Josh Korngut is a writer and filmmaker based in Toronto. He's also the managing editor of Dread Central, a web publication that covers all things horror. Check out his podcast, Development Hell, wherever you listen, and say hi to him on socials via @joshkorngut.