The Taste of Things, 2023 (Apple TV, Prime)
It’s hard to tell at first if this is a story of two servants in the kitchen, or the boss and his cook. It stars one of the most luminous actresses Juliette Binoche and her former real life partner Benoit Magimel playing a celebrated gourmand Dodin (is he a chef? He doesn’t work in a restaurant yet he’s courted by royals.)
This film is exquisite. There is no music. Attention is given instead to the sounds of a kitchen and a dining room: the tinkling of cutlery, clinking of plates, clang of a copper pan on a cast iron stove, the knocking of wood on ceramic, on metal, of metal on ceramic, the hissing of steam, the crackling of oil frying, the coals of the fire being transferred from fireplace to stove.
The light is emphatically French, the plein-air dappled summer of impressionist paintings, of Monet and Manet, of Dejeuner Sur l’herbe, of the playful black and white snapshots of Edwardian France by the child photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue, of straw hats and white poplin dresses, of waistcoats and pocket watches.
Sometimes the screen is in darkness, the action barely discernible, as in real life. Sometimes when the cast are eating, they make subtle little moans ‘mmm’. The relation between food and sex is gently explored. At one point, Dodin handles pears that have been poached, so floppy and translucently golden, laying one on its side on a plate, surrounding it with a toasted kerchief of feuille de briq. A few minutes later, he ascends the staircase to Binoche’s room where she is lying on her side, knees up, her cello-like bottom softly bared within white linen - the link between a pear and a woman’s shape is evoked.
This most French of films is directed by a Vietnamese director, Tran Anh Hung. It captures a time and a place and a nation.
The film is a hymn to food and good ingredients. People taste, brows furrowed, concentrating, detecting all the flavours. Juliette Binoche is the cuisinière. The man is her lover and colleague. They spend every day together cooking, tasting, drinking, working like surgeons; ‘pass me this’. There is a young girl who can taste a mouthful of soup and detect every single ingredient. She wants to apprentice under the ‘Napoleon of cuisine’.
It made me think about French food. I prefer Italian food. I don’t eat meat and Italian food is easier for a vegetarian with its emphasis on cucina povera, peasant food rather than expensive ingredients. I am a peasant. I’ve done some genealogical investigations into my family history. On my father’s side, we are Irish, Scottish, Italian working class with some artisanal skill. My mother is English and possibly posher. So I like simple but excellent ingredients. Italian cooking is vulgar, expressive, full of flavour and sunshine.
The Italians taught the French to cook while the Russians taught them table manners, how to serve courses ‘à la Russe’, consecutively, rather than everything piled on the table, savoury and sweets, in one go. (You still see this former method in Georgian cooking: piles and piles of small plates, layered on top of one another, like a culinary Jenga accompanied by speeches, toasts and polyphonic singing. )
But the French are masters of subtlety and finesse, of le mot juste, le bon gout. Which makes them kind of boring a lot of the time, too classic, too conventional, but searingly brilliant when the balance is right. The French are a perfect mix of Northern and Southern as befits their locale at the centre of Europe. Restrained Catholics rather than rigid Protestants or blousy saturated southern Catholics.
This film is a worthy successor to Babette’s Feast, the Danish film from 1987. Again a paean to a French cook, but this time photographed in the cool, sober, elegant colours of Northern Europe.
I could watch The Taste of Things again and again. I want to live in that world. I want a partner who I can cook and garden with, with whom I can discuss food until everyone else is bored. It appeals to the trad wife, the homesteader in me.
You can stream this film but I urge you to see it on a big screen if you can. The next time I watch it, I want it in 3d Max! Maybe at the Las Vegas Sphere.
Other foodie films:
Heartburn: starring Meryl Streep, the book is much better than the film. Nora Ephron’s true life story of being abandoned while pregnant by her husband and cooking her way through it. Ephron is all about not overcrowding the pan.
"He taught me to cook mushrooms. He taught me that if you heat the butter very hot and put just a very few mushrooms into the frying pan, they come out nice and brown and crispy, whereas if the butter is only moderately hot and you crowd the mushrooms, they get all mushy and wet."
Like Water for Chocolate: I recreated the Chiles en Nogada dish (stuffed poblano peppers with walnut sauce) from this Mexican film. The recipe is in my first book ‘Supper Club’.
Big Night: directed by Stanley Tucci. It has a lengthy canonical scene in which the brothers cook an omelette after a crushing failure of a night in the restaurant. I got my recipe for Il Timpano, a giant pasta pie, from that film, which is also in ‘Supper Club’.
Julie/Julia: directed by Nora Ephron starring Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci. (The same people come up again and again don’t they? )It’s interesting that the first major movie featuring a blogger was about a food blogger. I’ve eaten at the Rouen restaurant La Couronne where American food writer Julia Child experienced her culinary revelation by way of ‘sole meunière’. It’s the oldest restaurant in France, dating from the 14th century. Read about it here.
Sideways: this film is more about wine but most foodies adore wine. It’s beautifully photographed, very funny and lyrical about Pinot Noir.
Chocolat, also starring Juliette Binoche. I made her chocolate truffles ‘Nipples of Venus’ from the film.
Goodfellas: the prison dinner scene, where garlic is sliced paper thin with a razor blade. (I heard from a taxi driver that the best food in Naples is in the women’s prison cooked by the mafia wives. The best ingredients are brought into the prison for them). The late night dinner scene with Scorsese’s real life mum after they’ve done a murder.
The Godfather I and II: so many scenes: ‘Take the cannoli, leave the gun’. The poignant scene at the end of Godfather II where Michael is left eating alone as the family celebrates the Don’s birthday. The assassination in the Italian neighbourhood restaurant.
Marie Antoinette by Sophia Coppola - the I want Candy scene.
The Lady and The Tramp spaghetti scene.
Pulp Fiction: the opening dialogue talking about French McDonalds ‘Royale with cheese’.
Shawshank Redemption, beer on the roof scene. Nothing like a cold beer on a hot day.
Just saw this last night
Fell in love with that movie from the first scenes, it’s sad but exquisite. And so good that Benoit agreed to be in the movie with Juliette