CAUTION, CHEF AT WORK: Helena Bonham Carter brings new elan to a boy's kitchen in 'Toast.'

THE TEST for the plausibility of a memoir: How bad does the author make himself look? In some respects, Toast does make its author look warty. The film is based (demurely) on the semiautobiographical book by the noted food writer Nigel Slater.

In the British Midlands of the 1960s, Nigel is a pale shy boy (played by Oscar Kennedy in youth, and Freddie Highmore in his teenage years). His lovely mother (Victoria Hamilton) is in failing health. It's not her culinary skills young Nigel will miss, since she has trouble with rudimentary tasks like opening a can. On special occasions, the boy is fed with the best of British haute cuisine. Maybe nothing since Fawlty Towers (or Life Is Sweet) has demonstrated how awful that could be.

Nigel's choleric, formidable father (Ken Stott) chases away the handsome organic gardener the boy has a crush on. Further servant trouble occurs when Mrs. Potter arrives. The new cleaning woman seduces the old widower, who has been keeping a beady gaze on the tops of her stockings; she's also a knockout cook. In despair, Nigel learns to cook at a home economics class, in hopes of winning his father back.

As Mrs. Potter, Helena Bonham Carter delivers juicy vaudeville comedy in a chain-smoking, butt-wiggling part. She overpowers Toast's serious side, its insistence that we must always remember that this is a story of a boy with greatness in him. We can believe Nigel's loneliness, especially when a suite of well-picked Dusty Springfield songs sums it up. But Carter's Potter is so much fun—her conniving is so cool—that we can't share Nigel's snobbish outrage that his father is marrying a mere cleaning woman. Does director S. J. Clarkson believe Nigel's opinion that Mrs. Potter is far too common? Possibly, given the end titles.

Toast begins a six-film series of British indie films playing locally under the title "From Britain With Love." Upcoming features include In Our Name, about a female Iraq War vet trying to readjust (June 23 and 25); Debs Gardner-Paterson's Africa United (June 30 and July 2) and A Boy Called Dad (July 21 and 23).

Toast

Unrated; 96 min.

Thursday, June 16, 7pm; Saturday, June 25, noon Camera 3, San Jose