Kimber Myers
The Taste of Things is an achingly romantic movie that caused me to literally hold my hand to my heart in a swoon, but it doesn’t idealize only love. This superb French drama casts an equally warm glow on the experiences of cooking, eating, and living a bucolic life — and specifically doing all of that in 1889 France. Director Anh Hung Tran (The Scent of Green Papaya) has crafted a film très français, from the inclusion of the pot-au-feu, the country’s national dish, to the frequent philosophizing on food and wine. The Taste of Things deserves to be mentioned alongside Big Night, Babette’s Feast, and Like Water for Chocolate in the pantheon of beloved movies about food, and it’s also a profoundly moving meditation on what it means to be human and how we demonstrate our love.
Though The Taste of Things is more than a food movie, oh, what a food movie it is. Murmurs of appreciation for the wine and food rumbled throughout the audience at my screening. (Or was that our stomachs? Warning: do not go to this movie hungry or with a belly full of mediocre sustenance.) Hung’s adaptation of Marcel Rouff’s The Life and Passion of Dodin-Bouffant, Gourmet has little traditional plot. Instead, its structure centers around meals and the relationship between Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel) and his partner in the kitchen and in life, Eugenie (Juliette Binoche). It progresses at a leisurely pace, spending the better part of its first hour devoted to the preparation and enjoyment of a single, multi-course meal, beginning harvesting vegetables in the expansive garden at Dodin’s country estate. Each element of the process — searing veal, boiling crayfish, straining butter — is unhurried, with attention paid to every detail both by those preparing the dishes on screen and those behind the camera. I’ve rarely felt as jealous of anyone on screen as I was of those who were served a steaming, elaborately constructed slice of vol-au-vent.
Sensuous and sensual, this cooking is often done with bare hands or the ideal implement. A Williams-Sonoma turbotiere similar to one in the film goes for $2200 and seems like the kind of single-use tool that most apartment dwellers would eschew, but is put to fine use by Eugenie. Dodin and Eugenie’s kitchen is well-equipped and lovingly lit, serving as the perfect stage for the couple’s culinary ballet. Shots pan to capture each step of the dance as Dodin and Eugenie work together in the kitchen, along with their young assistants Violette (Galatéa Bellugi) and prodigious Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire). The cooking scenes are dynamically shot and edited, maintaining Dodin and Eugenie’s energy and vigor for their work for the audience. Outside the cooking scenes, edits come less frequently, lending a sense of calm and ease to the couple’s interactions and the idyllic life they’ve built together. Binoche and Magimel are former partners and current co-parents, and they’re just marvelous on screen together; every scene they share is imbued with affection, warmth, and understanding.
Magimel’s Dodin may be known as the “Napoleon of Gastronomy,” but he is quick to credit Eugenie for her profound contribution to his fame, success, and happiness. This is an ode to romantic love, while also celebrating Eugenie and her independence. Her life and approach to marriage are strikingly modern; she refuses to lose herself in her relationship to her more famous partner, and Dodin, in turn, values her as more than just his lover. Each of them treats cooking as art, cooking as communication, and cooking as an act of love, but they also see it as just cooking and inherently valuable. Tran asserts that one of the things that makes us human is cooking and eating as acts of pleasure. We do it for more than just nourishment and sustenance; it brings joy and it can express our devotion to those we love.
Along with Binoche and Magimel, Tran has crafted something to be savored and shared. The Taste of Things is sigh-inducingly sweet and rich with meaning, but it finds balance just as the best dishes and menus do with bittersweet and gently humorous moments. I wandered out in a ravenous, blissful daze, full of love for what I’d just seen and immediately searching where I could find the nearest vol-au-vent on a menu.
A
“The Taste of Things” is out Friday in limited release.
