The Taste of Things — you’ll want to savour every morsel, again and again

There is a brief whisper of Auguste Escoffier’s name along the way as we watch the two central characters in The Taste of Things, the cook Eugénie and her gourmet boss Dodin, prepare exquisite dishes for the chef’s gentlemen friends. There are no kitchen brigades yet, and you’re reminded that the old French kitchens may have been spaces of grace, courtesy and quiet respect for food and its preparation and serving.

If you go into his film cold, you might reasonably think that Benoît Magimel, as Dodin-Bouffant, the meticulous chef at the centre of this country kitchen, is portraying a historical chef of the ilk of the leading French chefs of the day, but he is mostly fictional, having been conjured by Swiss author Marcel Rouff in his 1925 novel with the lengthy title, The Passionate Epicure: La Vie et la Passion de Dodin-Bouffant, Gourmet. Dodin is in fact very loosely based on Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, although he died in 1826 at the age of 70, while Dodin is in his middle years in 1889.

So it’s a slim connection, the author having only had Savarin in mind when forming his character.

Also in her middle years is Eugénie (the timeless Juliette Binoche), and the relationship between the two is nuanced, to say the least. He is her boss, she is his cook, but he is a cook too, and a very fine one. Yet they are equals in this (his) kitchen, which underscores the lack of the kitchen rank system, which was based on a military brigade, that Escoffier was to pioneer in the decade to follow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKKCGtoIOVY

The 35-minute opening sequence brought to mind the relatively short 24-minute equivalent of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, in that the directors of both films (Trần Anh Hùng in this case) revel in a slow-release tableau that sets the scenes for their otherwise very different films and stories. Obviously, no other comparisons apply.

Instead of the horrors of Omaha Beach in Normandy we have a genteel kitchen, where Eugénie and Dodin are preparing a lavish feast for people we have yet to meet.

Bowls are carried, spoons clang, feet traipse this way and that, carrying pots and implements, the four people in the kitchen moving past one another in every direction with practised precision and no mishaps, in a sequence that must have required days of rehearsal. This will become, if it isn’t already, one of the most famous and rewatched sequences in the history of cinema, to go back to and be raked over once more whenever set pieces are discussed by movie buffs.

Already, even though it did not make the cut as best foreign film at the Oscars, a cult has grown around the film.

But for some of us, such as, inter alia, myself — people for whom food and its making are theatre, or daily tableaus that play out life itself — we know we’ve been invited into the bosom of French cooking, a fly on the wall at a time when everything was what we’d think of now as a classic of la cuisine française. Covetable copper pots are everywhere. A lobster is removed from a boiling copper pot to be refreshed in an ice bath; a rack of veal comes steaming out of an oven; butter is clarified; turbot is poached in milk with bay leaves; blanched vegetables are smothered in béchamel and poured into a large pastry case, a sort of giant vol-au-vent. Lettuce is braised; turkey truffled.

Juliette Binoche in The Taste of Things. Image: Stephanie Branchu/ European Film Festival

Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel in The Taste of Things. Image: Carole Bethuel / European Film Festival

At the centre of the menus presented as the story unfolds is the humble pot-au-feu, a brave and risky choice, given its origins as a peasant dish.

And this proves a point the film quietly makes, without saying it as much as inferring it — that fine French cooking does have its roots in the kitchens of the poor (represented in this kitchen by the maid Violette), and that so many dishes on the tables of the rich emerged from the humble kitchens of the lower classes.

It’s not the film reviewer’s job to tell the whole story of a movie but to set the scene, so I’m loath to reveal any of the many morsels that follow, regarding the nature of the relationship between Eugénie and Dodin, how it will play out, issues of health, and whether or not the foreign prince pitches up for dinner. It all unfolds beautifully and with careful observation and restraint. We know what we know when we need to know it. I find it rare that a film succeeds in creating this level of subtlety. And such a joy to encounter it.

The minor characters are full of interest, especially Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire), the humble assistant cook (terms like commis were yet to come) whose palate, when identifying the ingredients of a bourguignotte sauce, is a marvel to Dodin and to any cook who watches her raise spoon to lip. (It’s not bourguignon but a sauce for eggs or fish.)

Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire and Benoît Magimel in The Taste of Things. Image: Stephanie Branchu/ European Film Festival

Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel in The Taste of Things. Image: Stephanie Branchu / European Film Festival

If Binoche and Benoît appear to have a natural rapport it’s because they do: they were once married and have a child together. But they are not alone at the interplay of food, life and mutual respect in this beautiful piece of cinematic art. We are in the kitchen with them, thanks to the magnificent direction and the exquisite cinematography by Jonathan Ricquebourg.

And it is that. A work of art that cinephiles will talk about every time food and dining come to mind, just as Babette’s Feast came up at every dinner party for years after its release in 1987.

Beg, plead and cajole the organisers of the European Film Festival to give it more slots. Not to see it would be like hearing about a fabulous dinner that you were not invited to, or worse, which you were invited to but declined to attend. And will regret it forever. DM

Read more about the European Film Festival here. The screening schedule is here.