Foodies will eat up the drama in ‘Taste of Things’
It starts humbly, a gnarled turnip emerging from the soil in the early morning light; carrots and lettuces collected and assembled alongside fish and poultry and cream in a large country kitchen. These plants and animals pulled from the earth, ready to be transformed with the precise applications of fat and heat.
Thus begins Tran Anh Hung’s “The Taste of Things,” which opens with a spectacular sequence of cooking performed by Juliette Binoche, portraying a cook named Eugenie. But she’s much more than a cook, she’s the collaborator and companion of Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel), a famed (fictional) gourmand in 1885 France called the “Napoleon of the culinary arts.” Though he gets the hefty moniker, Eugenie is his muse, his sounding board and his inspiration.
Eugenie cooks with a small smile and the calm, confident movements of a battlefield medic, wrestling flesh and flour into fine food. Cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg’s camera follows her journey around and around the kitchen in long takes, peering into pots and bowls, capturing her bold movements and instruction to her assistant Violette (Galatéa Bellugi). Dodin jumps in as a sous-chef, taking the time to teach a young girl, Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire), a potential apprentice with a perfect palate.
Though Eugenie moves with grace, Hung does not shoot her as if she’s a dancer, but rather, like a doctor, as she sautés, sears, strains, blanches, whips, whisks, churns, boils and bakes everything in sight. With skill and ease,
she delivers a feast of rustic, yet complex, culinary delights to Dodin and his compatriots: consommé that makes the men hum in reverence, a showstopping volau-vent (pastry stuffed with a creamy, savory stew), turbot poached in milk, roasted veal loin with braised lettuce and that miracle of scientific reaction, a baked Alaska. Dodin and his friends can barely contain their moans of pleasure as they sample each decadent dish, and the sensuality with which Hung presents the experience is utterly breathtaking. You’ll want to cheer at each sauce.
Eugenie is a technician, a pragmatist, while Dodin is the romantic, a pleasure-seeking hedonist with a poet’s mind and a dedicated patron of her arts, including even the simplest omelets. He proposes to her regularly, but all she will concede to is a late night knock at her bedroom door. But theirs is a beautiful partnership, cemented in a love for the intellectual, corporeal and emotional pleasures of food.
“The Taste of Things” is an adaptation,
of sorts, of Marcel Rouff’s 1924 novel “The Passionate Epicure,” fleshing out the relationship between the gastronome and his cook. French Vietnamese filmmaker Hung has mentioned that the film is also in part inspired by his own marriage: His wife, Tran Nu Yen Khe, starred in his first four films, and is the costume designer on “The Taste of Things.”
There is an additional layer of interpersonal history that adds a layer of meaning to this text as well: Binoche and Magimel were married 20 years ago and share a daughter. This is their first time working together since they fell in love on the set of the 1999 film “The Children of the Century.” As Dodin, Magimel looks at her worshipfully; as Eugenie, Binoche regards him askance. But Eugenie can’t resist Dodin’s devotion for long, especially when he cooks for her, in what seems an almost sacred, holy rite; his expression of true love reflected in each delicate plate.
“The Taste of Things” follows its own unique rhythms and does not follow the traditional structures of conventional film pacing. Instead, it follows the cadence of a kitchen, the length of a meal, the seasons of nature and of life, of time passing throughout the day. Time is, of course, the other crucial ingredient in cooking, waiting for something to transform over hours or in the blink of an eye.
The film is a celebration of food, the kind that achieves a balance between simplicity and decadence. At one point, Dodin’s group of friends don napkins over their heads to hide their shame while they consume ortolans whole; the delicacy is accompanied by a simple rustic bread and glasses of table wine. It’s a far cry from the outlandish menu presented to them smugly by the Prince of Eurasia (Mhamed Arezki) in a show of one-upmanship, resulting in an eight-hour meal the gourmands endure rather than enjoy.
But food is just a vessel for the love story in “The Taste of Things,” one we don’t see often enough, of a sweet, egalitarian love, built on respect and companionship, savored sweetly in the autumn of life. Ultimately, Eugenie poses to Dodin a very important question: “Am I your cook or your wife?” He answers correctly, but if you want to know the right answer, you’ll have to take in the sensual charms of “The Taste of Things.”