THE TASTE OF THINGS reveals a lavish and charming French 19th-century culinary kitchen. We float about a room looking into bubbling pots. The theater comes alive with the sights and sounds of food being pared, gutted, braised, seasoned, and then sampled with a common spoon. Outside we hear the cry of peacocks and winds caressing the trees. These sounds blend with the sizzling gastronomic miracles of cooking on wood-fired, cast-iron stoves and ovens. Tending this gentle kitchen is Dodin, one of the most sought-after chefs of the time, portrayed impeccably by Benoît Magimel. Eugénie, the cook who manifests Dodin’s vision, is portrayed with mesmerizing grace by Juliette Binoche, the former wife of Magimel in real life. Voilette (Galatéa Bellugi), the young helper knows exactly which utensil the cook needs next. It appears to be an effortless choreographed dance amid scalding pots and cast-iron stoves, each task as important as the next, with an economy of words among the three.
Director Tran Anh Hung (THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA) knows his way around a foodie movie. Cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg expresses time, place, and seasons with precise lighting indoors and out. The earth tones consume the kitchen and carry us from one act to the next. Director Anh reports: there were no cooking doubles for the stars; Binoche and Magimel performed all the preparations that are shown onscreen themselves—rendered so perfectly you will be smelling seafood in a vol-au-vent pastry shell instead of the popcorn in the lobby.
Dodin and Eugénie have worked and loved together for twenty years. Eugénie has resisted the constant marriage proposals from Dodin, seeing no advantage to formalizing their delightful arrangement. THE TASTE OF THINGS is perhaps the most sensual film ever made, and the expressions of love between Dodin and Eugénie bring a sense of touch to the screen. It is a movie of precisions. The language is pronounced as lovingly as the food is prepared, with perfect manners. Pauline, the wide-eyed child prodigy who can taste 98 out of 100 ingredients in the soup with one spoonful, gives the movie a place to go as the tale of love and loss plays out. Affection is expressed by all the characters with simple kindnesses such as the sharing of food from the same plate in the kitchen, even when cooking for just themselves.
The communal representation of the idyllic French estate sanitizes the classism and sexism rampant in that era. Hands that have never seen the edge of a knife or the handle of a hot skillet, and peasant farmers who seem unfazed by their poverty are equally lovingly photographed without revealing the cuts and scars. Perhaps this is forgivable. THE TASTE OF THINGS is about the mixing of senses to create cuisine, not about the mixing of social stratifications. Maybe visiting an imagined French paradise of incomparable food allows us to imagine the whole world sitting at the same table. THE TASTE OF THINGS is transporting, which is the movie we need to propel us through these next few months before our own valley gives up her grey skies for the sights and scents of summer.