Quite the Meal - The Taste of Things (2023)

What to say about Anh Hung Tran's The Taste of Things? It is idyllic, to be sure. Also, lyrical, and literary in a way that calls to mind films like A Day in the Country. It feels so sensorial, not to say sensual and there is a foundation of genuine emotional depth - an adult emotional depth in a cinematic landscape often littered with infantilization or histrionics masquerading as emotion.

Dodin and Eugenie talk to each other, are demonstrably loving toward each other when silent, and all of this is communicated and shared with friends and family via their beautiful meals.

Cuisine here is more than mere food cooked for consumption; it's more than merely some dining "experience", however exquisite. Each meal Eugenie and Dodin conceive and execute is a sumulacrum of existence. We neglect to our peril our place in the chain of how our embodied existence is born of nature and to nature will return. 

In the meantime, if we live well and attentively, life becomes infused, suffused even, with something like grace.

Nothing is taken for granted in their kitchen on the path from garden to table. Vegetables are picked with care and attention, and likely, love. There is a quiet contentment found in Eugenie's face as she leads the dance in the film's first meal for Dodin and his friends. She demurs when they ask why she doesn't join them; she converses via her cooking.

It might be that Eugenie came to Dodin to work for him; perhaps she is "the cook" but she is the Napoleon of Gastronomy's equal (at least). dodin loves her but this is accompanied with a sense of a kind of awe, particularly in a later sequence when he asks if he may watch her eat.

Eugenie and Dodin are what Ralph Fiennes' Chef character in The Menu is but a shitty caricature of. The aims of each film are considerably different, but in passing, The Taste of Things takes note of the shift in how food and dining were changing in the late nineteenth century (Escoffier is mentioned in passing as the sort of celebrity chef whose descendants flourish down to today.)

Very few of us treat food with any sense of where it came from, the conditions by which it was made or produced, or under which it lived or how well (or more usually, ill-) treated the animal was whose meat (and/or meat by-product) find its way to market and from market to table. Here, in our film we live in a past time where time passes leisurely (admittedly, for Dodin and his cohort; but class isn't interrogated here too deeply; it is simply given) and there is time to witness, appreciate, and understand more deeply, how far removed we are in contemporary times from any sense of a genuine holistic relationship to our meals.

As mentioned, Escoffier is beginning his partnership with the Ritz and Dodin and his friends see this as a kind of democratization of fine cuisine. It could be transformative. Because they are bourgeoisie, it is unlikely they cared tow pins for all the classes that would be unable to participate in this; however, they would be shocked to see how less intimate dining would become in our era, regardless of whether it is haute or not.

Of course, the pace of life in the 21st century hardly allows fot he lovely and languorous ease of preparation, execution, collaboration, and delivery of the meals we see here.

There are quiet revelations along the way. Violette, the maid, introduces Dodin and Eugenie to her niece Paulina, whose senses are so refined she can parse and name each ingredient (but two) in a sauce. We learn in passing that Eugenie's father was a great pastry chef, but that she learned her skills from her mother.

Dodin and Eugenie are clearly in love and have been for twenty years. She is reluctant to wed as she will lose her ability to not open the door when Dodin comes knocking to spend the night.

We see her swoon in the kitchen. Perhaps it is mere exhaustion, but we sense something else. Later, going in search of her, Dodin finds her under a tree in their garden. She protests that she is fine, that she merely dozed off. Dodin cries out for his friend the doctor, Rabaz who says she likely needs rest; but she'll have none of it.

Eugene and Dodin are talking. She passes out before him and this time, a second doctor is brought in to consult, but neither he nor Rabaz can say for sure what afflicts her. They prescribe medicine and rest.

Dodin ensures she rests and he will tend the kitchen and serve her. The flipping of roles so very natural. Such is love, truly, when each serves the other.

At one point, Eugenie muses that she could get used to being waited on. Shortly after comes the moment when Dodin discourses on hte physiological aspects of the gustatory process and expresses that in Eugnie there is such presence that she transcends that process. "May I watch you?" he asks solicitiously.

In an earlier sequence, when Eugenie and Dodin are sitting by the river at dusk and they discuss her reluctance to marry, her answer is so matter-of-fact that we know they've trod this terrain before. She isn't rebutting or rebuffing Dodin; she doesn't see the point of marrying and is probably less disturbed about losing her autonomy than we realize because there is such warmth and understanding between them already.

Still, it is a gentle surprise when - after lifting a thin rice paper thin sheet of dough on a dessert plate of crême fraiche and berries, Eugenie finds a ring.

The next scene could be out of Renoir (Pierre Auguste, as opposed to Jean); at a table under the late summer sun, among a gathering of friends and family, Dodin announces their wedding will be in autumn. Even though Eugenie had told him earlier that he wasn't a poet, Dodin's reflections on the relationship of cuisine to the seasons and the passage of time that characterizes our lives is one of the most poetic monologues in recent cinema.

A parallel plot involves a prince extending an invitation to Dodin to dine with him and sample his chef's skill. His friends assume he will decline, but Dodin accepts the invitation. The meal, they agree later was too much; eight hours of a variety of courses that were presented with little or no thought of how they should or could relate, wines that were adequate but again, some were mismatched, and so on. The expectation is that Dodin would prepare a meal for the prince in return.

Dodin decides to prepare a pot-au-feu, a simple dish but one that Dodin feels to be emblematic of France herself. It is a hearty dish of slow boiled meat and vegetables and typically served in two courses (the broth first and then the meat and vegetables).

Everyone, including Eugenie, seem intrigued by the choice, but we can suss out that the modesty of the meal would be the rejoinder to the prince's overly lavish and garish repast. Eugenie, however, has one last spell from which she does not awake. What follows is a mourning simple and direct and poignant, sans histrionics or melodrama.

Nevertheless, Dodin is inconsolable. He refuses to eat and drinks too much as his friends look on and offer what support they can. His friends hire a chef to prepare an omelette that Eugenie used to make for him, but he sends her away. After declining to take Pauline on as an apprentice, he relents, and begins the process of hiring a chef. In one instance, Dodin describes how the recipe a candidate is follow should be approached. It is a dramatic and floral, though not florid, description but so overwhelming that the prospect respectfully declines the position. 

Shortly thereafter, Pauline and Dodin are in the kitchen together when his friend Grimaud arrives with a dish prepared by a chef nearby. He eats it deliberately, quietly and declares that they've found the new chef. Grimaud and Dodin leave the kitchen and just as Pauline is about to sample the dish, Dodin tells her to hurry up and join them.

The camera begins a three-sixty pan of the kitchen and the interior hues change from verdant to siennas and umbers, the fading day's light illuminating Eugenie and Dodin at the kitchen table. He asks her if she is wife or cook. She replies, 

"The cook."

This is one of the most Proustian of films I've seen; I get the impression that the novel on which the film was based (Marcel Rouff's La vie et la passion de Dodin-Bouffant) may well have been a sensory ode to cuisine. On the other hand, Tran's The Scent of Green Papaya established him as one of cinema's masters of the quiet moment, loaded with a rare harmony and understanding of the nature of the senses.

Here, though, is an intimate work, so intimate that every surface, every moment is like a lived memory. I found myself humbled by the film, by Eugenie and Dodin's love for each other, by how each of the supporting cast brought fully realized characters to life. 

I've said nothing of Juliette Binoche or Benoît Magimel's performances because there is only Eugenie and Dodin. In a year of remarkable performances, some of whom are being recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Binoche and Magimel quietly vanished so two other humans could live, love, and pass time before us.

There is no soundtrack, no background music. All the sounds are the sounds of the wind in the trees, the ambient noises of the French countryside, the clatter of silverware on ceramic, the hissing of sauces and liquids among the symphony of sounds in a kitchen where alchemy is taking place. No need for music amid so much life.

Consequently, Jonathan Riquebourg's cinematography simply places us there, but "there" is a heightened environment, though not exaggerated. There is no impressionism, nothing extra, but a naturalistic approach that brings us into a specific moment a hundred and forty years ago. You could smell the food, feel the chill of the ice in the ice cream maker, the warmth of the sun, and even feel the fabric of clothes, the rough-hewn kitchen table, the down of the pillows.

The Taste of Things was one of France's entries for the Oscars; in lieu of it, Anatomy of a Fall secured the position of representing France in the race for best international film. That film is a masterpiece, as well, and deserving of the recognition. In some ways, though, I almost feel that The Taste of Things is better served; doling out nominations and awards is fine for sport and yes, I know how important it is for the arts, but in some ways, the hubbub of an award ceremony would be every bit as gauche as an overstuffed, overlong, ill thought out meal. I'd rather stay in the kitchen and listen to Eugenie and Dodin discuss their day.