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Film Reviews

The Taste of Things

Published May 18, 2024
Not your average cooking program

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin is famous for the statement, “Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are”. It appears in The Physiology of Taste (1825), a book in which cooking becomes a subject of philosophical and sociological reflection, an artform and a science. No-one has ever taken their food quite so seriously or done so much to change the perception of the everyday act of eating.

Brillat-Savarin was the model for Marcel Rouff’s novel, La vie et la passion de Dodin-Bouffant, Gourmet (1924), translated as The Passionate Epicure. That book is the basis of The Taste of Things, by French-Vietnamese director, Ahn Hung Tran, a film that has been described as “food porn” because of the amount of time we spend in the kitchen watching dishes being prepared. If we’re not in the kitchen we’re at the dining table, as these gourmet creations are unveiled and consumed. The movie begins with a kitchen sequence which lasts for more than half an hour, with only the most perfunctory dialogue. It’s utterly absorbing.

The time is the late 19th century, the era in which the Impressionists celebrated French landscape and leisure. In Dodin’s mansion, in a semi-rural part of the Loire Valley, the kitchen is almost certainly the most spacious room. There we will meet the master of the house (Benoît Magimel) and his chief cook, Eugénie (Juliette Binoche), who is also his mistress of twenty years. Their kitchen assistant, a teenage girl named Violette (Galatéa Bellugi), has brought her young niece, Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire), who shows an exceptional early aptitude for cuisine.

The kitchen is the engine room of this film. Occasionally the action may stray into the garden or the bedchamber, but almost every scene, and every relationship seems to revolve around the oven. One watches in a kind of trance as vegetables are cut up and placed in pans; whole chickens dropped into pots; sauces and bouillons skimmed and tested; vol-au-vents filled with steaming ingredients; rich desserts lathered in cream; fine wines tasted and savoured… it’s a constant, vicarious banquet. We may not be able to taste Dodin’s cooking, but we feed our imaginations like gluttons. In comparison, Babette’s Feast was merely lunch.

The meal being prepared will be shared by Dodin and a select group of bourgeois friends, who appreciate fine cuisine and wine. They relish each course, commenting on small nuances. When the banquet is over, they head for the kitchen to shower praise on Eugénie, asking why she won’t join them at the dining table. She is, however, more comfortable in the kitchen, which is her realm and her studio. She is also comfortable with her longstanding arrangement with Dodin, having turned down his numerous offers of marriage. He consoles himself by making her laugh, quipping that marriage is a dinner that begins with dessert. When she asks, “Am I your cook or your wife?” he comes up with the correct answer.

None of Dodin’s civilised friends are the least bit scandalised by the couple’s unmarried status, recognising that their shared devotion to cuisine is akin to being part of a holy order.

While the friends are relaxing, a messenger arrives, who invites Dodin to a meal with a visiting potentate, “the Prince of Eurasia”. His companions are sure Dodin will decline the invitation, but he accepts on behalf of the entire group. The meal turns out to be a laborious attempt to impress the great gourmet – an eight-hour ordeal, with three separate sittings. We are only present at the beginning when the menu is recited. This takes a long time, our astonishment growing with each new item on the list.

Dodin is not impressed by the prince’s excessive hospitality, and decides he will invite His Highness for lunch, serving a classic pot-au-feu, the epitome of French peasant cuisine. But as he prepares his menu, Eugénie’s health begins to fail. She makes light of it, but the doctors can offer no accurate diagnosis, and Dodin is devastated. He treats Eugénie as if she were the queen of the household, lovingly preparing a meal for her, opening bottles of rare and expensive wine. Although he claims they are in the “autumn” of their lives, he acts like the most besotted of lovers.

The sensuality Dodin finds in the preparation of food is emphasised by a sequence in which the smooth form of a pear is followed by a glimpse of Eugénie’s naked back and hip, as he joins her in the bedroom.

Tran shows us that Dodin and Eugénie’s bond, forged through their shared obsession with cuisine, is also a powerful, mutual love – to the point where it’s almost impossible to separate carnal and gustatory appetites. For twenty years, Dodin has been knocking at Eugénie’s bedroom door, knowing he may or may not be admitted, depending on her mood. It seems to have only increased his passion and devotion, bound up with his respect for her ability to realise his recipes. For Eugénie, her understanding of Dodin’s cuisine has become instinctive, a kind of second nature.

The two leads, Binoche and Magimel, are former partners who have a daughter together. Although their real-life liaison ended 20 years ago, they have been able to rekindle the chemistry for this film. They seem to have no difficulty playing a couple who have spent the past 20 years as inseparables.

Tran is a director of great subtlety, and what appears to be a film about food, gradually reveals itself to be a film about love. It’s as if the partnership in the kitchen sets the blueprint for Dodin and Eugénie’s romance, with passion constrained by the most exacting discipline. Every scene of this minimal story is balanced by another, in emulation of the way Dodin adjusts his soups and sauces. The epicure’s love of complexity is jolted by the pretentious meal served by the prince, leading Dodin to a firmer appreciation of humble, traditional fare. Eugénie’s complete satisfaction in being Dodin’s employee, when she could easily have been his wife, is balanced by his willingness to become her slave when she falls ill.

This is a story about taking cuisine as a model for life, but also about a search for perfection always destined to be thwarted, a point emphasised by regular references to the changing seasons. Dodin and Eugénie have made food the centre of their very existence, but the satisfaction one takes from the greatest of meals is purely transitory. We remember our feeling of pleasure, but not the flavours and sensations that delighted the palate. With the return of appetite, a new cycle begins.

 

 

 

 

The Taste of Things

Directed by Anh Hung Tran

Written by Anh Hung Tran, after a novel by Marcel Rouff

Starring: Juliette Binoche, Benoît Magimel, Emmanuel Salinger, Patrick d’Assumçao, Galatéa Bellugi, Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire, Jan Hammenecker, Frédéric Fisbach

France/Belgium, PG, 145 mins

 

  

Published in the Australian Financial Review, 18 May, 2024