Jonathan Pryce as Nat Dayan, and Jerome Holder as refugee Ayyash Habimana in Dough

DOUGH
Directed by John Goldschmidt
Certificate 12a
☆☆☆

DELICIOUS baked goods are at the centre of this lovely London comedy about an elderly Jewish baker, hoping to keep his family business going, and his young Muslim apprentice.

Over the bagels and chollah, the pair learn about the different worlds they both inhabit – and while this may sound as gooey and sweet as a fat lump of cake mix, it’s a satisfying yarn with two leads who rise beautifully.

Nat Dayan (Jonathan Pryce) is the son in Dayan & Sons – except he is now approaching retirement, and his own offspring, Stephen (Daniel Caltagirone) is a high-flying lawyer who wants his dad to ditch the bread and cakes.

Dayan’s freeholder Joanna (Pauline Collins) doesn’t want to sell up to property mogul Sam Cotton (Phil Davis) but she wants to somehow enjoy her nest egg and feels pressured to cut a deal.

Meanwhile, young refugee Ayyash Habimana (Jerome Holder) needs a job but is finding it hard to get employed. From Darfur, he and his mother came to London to flee the violence in their home city.

Ayyash decides to start selling cannabis – but manages to wangle an role helping Nat bake, hoping to use this as a front to sell his wares. In some slapstick moments, some of his dope finds its way into a batch of chollah, and suddenly the bakery is all the rage.

Can they work together, stop the bakery closing, and avoid having their collars felt?

This is a story of two people from apparently different cultures finding common ground. It is about how food binds us together, about how development robs cities of their character, of a sense of community, and offers a striking example of how property developers’ spiel so often overlooks the simple fact that not all of us want to live in some shiny, homogenised urban landscape.

There are little jokes throughout that have a definite north London bent, and references that many Review readers will get (Nat’s reverence for the boxer Kid Berg resonates, as does his proclamation that his grandfather was born in Stepney, his father in Walthamstow…)

This is a well-written and clever film, only let down by a slightly clichéd bunch of characters and a storyline that could have had more work done on parts.

How many times do we see the little guys up against an evil property developer wanting to rob them of their little shop?

It’s Batteries Not Included for London today, while the criminal gang leader Victor (Ian Hart) is sub-EastEnders, as is Cotton with his build-a-car-park plan.

But it feels mean to be nasty about a film with such a massive heart at its centre, and a message, no matter how simply told, about celebrating our mono-culturalism as a species, instead of always banging on about what makes people different from one another.

This fact is one that we should never stop shouting from the rooftops, especially in the current climate, so fair play to all involved.