In "Nonnas," recipes are love letters

Everyone has a nostalgia-soaked dish from childhood they wish they could recreate. But for one reason or another — a discontinued ingredient, a lack of skill, no written recipe, or a recipe riddled with “grandmother measurements” (a pinch of this, an eyeball of that) — it remains just out of reach. You might land on something intoxicatingly close, but still frustratingly lacking. Grandmothers, after all, are notorious for secret ingredients, something to make their cannelloni stand out from all the other nonnas on the block.

Trying to erase the space between the version we remember and the version we make often becomes one way to honor their love after they’re gone.

That tension, that ache, underpins the opening of “Nonnas,” the new Netflix film from director Stephen Chbosky and writer Liz Maccie. Inspired by the real-life story of Joe Scaravella — who opened Staten Island’s Enoteca Maria in honor of his late mother, with a rotating cast of real grandmothers as chefs — the film reframes food not as metaphor, but memory.

We begin in Brooklyn, 40 years ago. A young boy, Joe, rushes to grab a number at an Italian bakery as the camera glides through a “Chef’s Table”-style symphony of sweets: a cannoli being filled, a tiramisu being dusted, cases of pignoli, red-and-green Neapolitan cookies, steaming zeppole.

At home, Sunday dinner is underway. Joe’s mother and grandmother are hand-cutting fresh fettuccine, simmering Sunday gravy with torn basil. (When Joe asks how much to use, she shrugs and says, “You feel in your heart. You put in your heart.”) The table is soon heaving with plates of meatballs, crystal bowls of grated Parm, trays of lasagna with crisped edges. There’s wine, children, arguments over whether it’s called sauce or gravy and a yellow-and-white gingham Mr. Coffee percolator — just like the one that sat in my grandmother’s kitchen. It’s all sunlit, noisy, and full of life. A moment that feels like it could stretch on forever.

As Joe’s grandmother says, “No one grows old at the table.”

But of course, it doesn’t last. We shift forward 40 years. Joe (played by Vince Vaughn), now older, sits at his mother’s wake. The table is full again — spinach-and-ricotta stuffed shells, scungilli with 18 cloves of garlic, cassatas — but this time, it’s sympathy food. His mother is gone, and her sauce is, too.

In his grief, Joe tries to make it himself, alone in his dark kitchen. The attempt falls short.

It’s beautiful. It’s sad. And that’s just the first nine minutes of the film.

Because here’s the thing, in “Nonnas,” food isn’t a revelation. It’s a reality. From the very first scene — hands deep in dough, conversation unfolding not in words but in glances and gestures — the film operates on the quiet assumption that food has always been a bridge between people. A vessel for memory. A balm for grief.

This isn’t one of those stories where, three-quarters of the way through, someone realizes that Mom’s blackberry pie was the key to healing all along. There’s no culinary epiphany waiting in the wings. The women in “Nonnas” already know what food can do. They live it. They’ve lived it.

The drama isn’t in discovering food’s power—it’s in reckoning with its limits. What happens when cooking together doesn’t solve the hurt? When feeding someone can’t undo what’s been lost? The film doesn’t pretend that food can heal everything. But it suggests, with remarkable tenderness, that it might be enough to soften the sharpest parts.

It’s a love letter to food as a love letter.

And like all the best love letters, it’s rooted in attention. Not in grand declarations, but in presence. In watching closely and letting the details speak.

“If you saw Liz’s script, the first three pages were like a phone book,” Chbosky told me via a Zoom call following the film’s premiere. “It was thick, full of detail about food. She was so specific in the way she described it. We had a wonderful DP, Florian Ballhaus, who did a great job and we even got a little extra resources to shoot some extra food, which made a big difference.”

But honestly, Chbosky said, it was all about showing that kid’s face in the first scene: Young Joe watching his mom and nonna in the kitchen.

Lorraine Bracco and Talia Shire in "Nonnas" (Jeong Park/ Netflix )“But honestly, it’s all about showing that kid’s face — just looking,” he continued. “We all have that sense memory of the mystery of the kitchen, how something’s happening that we don’t understand. So we focus on Theo’s (actor Theodore Helm’s) face, looking at the pasta being rolled and cut, the mysteries being answered. You just have to show that face and the food, and the audience does the rest. Food is such a primal experience; if I asked anyone what they remember most from childhood, I guarantee food is part of those memories. You don’t have to do much more, just show it because it’s something we all share.”

For Chbosky, whose past films include “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and “Wonder,” the heart of the film is less about spectacle and more about specificity. “The more specific you can be, oddly, the more universal the story becomes,” he said. And in “Nonnas,” that specificity came straight from screenwriter Liz Maccie — who also happens to be his wife.

Maccie describes herself as coming from a “very loud, crazy Italian-American family” where food was central to everything, from Sunday dinners to funerals.

“For me, it’s my aunt,” Maccie told me. “She was really like my nonna. She was twenty years older than my mom and basically helped raise me. Her lasagna took three days to make. Literally. You’d hear these specific Tupperware containers coming out of the closet and think, ‘Oh my God, it’s lasagna.’ The sauce, the noodles—it was a whole process. She put so much love and attention into it. And then it would take ten minutes to eat. It’s a whole thing. Now, I make it once a year for my family on Christmas Eve. It’s my kids’ favorite.”

That kind of memory — stamped with sound and scent, containers and care—carries with it a quiet truth: love was part of the recipe, yes, but so was labor. Nonnas doesn’t shy away from that. The film reveres these women not for their perfection or their myth, but for their work. It lingers on their hands, their rituals, their fatigue. And in doing so, it offers something rare in mainstream movies: a cinematic thank-you to the women who fed us, who nurtured us, who gave so much of themselves to everyone else. It’s nostalgia, yes, but it’s also recognition. A celebration of love that was cooked, stirred and served warm. Over and over and over again.

“And it’ll be their forever memory,” Chbosky added of the couple’s children. “Mom’s Christmas Eve lasagna.”

Maccie’s obsession with detail didn’t stop at the food. The dialogue about food is just as textured — funny, familiar and deeply specific. There’s one line, for instance, where Vince Vaughn’s Joe asks Lorraine Bracco’s character, Roberta, about his grandmother’s Sunday sauce. “That’s like asking to see a woman’s mundate!” she snaps. The line feels lived-in because it is. “That’s how my family talked,” Maccie said, laughing.

She gestured at Chbosky’s Zoom square. “He married into it. So he can attest to this. These people talk. With their hands. Loudly. If you didn’t grow up in it, it probably seems totally cuckoo. And it is a little cuckoo. But when you’re inside it, they just say the craziest, funniest things—especially in serious moments.”

She paused, then added, “We just laughed so much with each other. That’s really what I drew from.”

That sense of inherited joy — of language and legacy passed down through kitchens and car rides and Sunday sauce — brought “Nonnas” to life. And working on the film deepened the bond between its married creators in ways neither of them expected. Maccie said collaborating on such a personal story reminded them what matters most: “family,” she said. “Not just the people you’re related to, but also your friends, your neighbors, your community. Working on this movie together really strengthened those bonds. It’s just beautiful.”

Chbosky nodded. “I can relate to that. And for me, I knew Liz wrote the movie as a love letter to her mom, her aunt and her family. And I directed it as my love letter to her. I don’t know how many husbands get the chance to film their wife’s family diary, but I did. And it made me appreciate Liz even more. There’s just no way around it. It was really special.”

"Nonnas" is now streaming on Netflix.