If you’re the type of foodie who gets all tingly inside when you watch people prepare a meal with the utmost precision and dexterity — with a fuckton of ingredients — then the first half-hour of The Taste of Things will have you amped up in the way action junkies get whenever a batshit-crazy set piece appears in a Mission: Impossible or Fast & Furious movie.
Set in a 19th-century France that’s sunny, bucolic and full of people looking to get fed, the movie opens with seasoned (pardon the pun) cook Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) and her boss, revered gourmet Dodin (Benoît Magimel), preparing a blowout of French cuisine that makes the dinner from Babette’s Feast look like a sloppy, alcohol-fueled late-night order at Waffle House. We’re talking veal loin with braised lettuce; a vol-au-vent (a hollow case of puff pastry) filled with savory goodness; a big-ass milk-soaked turbot; and even baked Alaska for dessert. Along with their loyal servant Violette (Galatéa Bellugi) and her aspiring-chef niece Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire, looking like Anya Taylor-Joy’s mini-me), the pair work in perfect unison to effortlessly create a sumptuous and scrumptious midday meal for Dodin and his appreciative crew of waistcoat-wearing gourmands.
Taste marks the welcome return of Vietnamese-born French filmmaker Trần Anh Hùng (The Scent of Green Papaya), who hasn’t made a film since 2016’s Eternity. Inspired by Marcel Rouff’s 1924 novel The Life and Passion of Dodin-Bouffant, Gourmet, Taste is Hùng’s quiet origin story about a different type of hero — one whose biggest superpower is breaking down not only all the ingredients in a meal, but how the whole damn thing was put together.
Basically a sophisticated hangout movie, Taste is two hours and change of viewers simply getting to know this gang of good-natured gluttons. Whether his characters are in the kitchen preparing or in the dining room chowing down, Hùng twirls his camera all around them, capturing the enthusiastic synergy that comes when people band together to develop (and devour) mouth-watering works of art. Dodin and his boys treat food like it’s practically a religion, even convening in a cabin to put tablecloths over their heads and nosh on freshly cooked ortolan — endangered songbirds that are highly delicious yet illegal to consume. (The tablecloths are allegedly used to keep in the aroma and prevent God from watching you.)
But Taste is mostly about the relationship between Binoche and Magimel’s culinary artistes. Living and cooking together for two decades, Eugénie and Dodin have built their relationship on respect for cooking and each other. Dodin is clearly in love with his longtime partner in both the kitchen and the bedroom. (Although they sleep in different rooms, Dodin often asks if he can knock on her door for a late-night visit.) While Eugénie prides herself on being a free spirit, even she has trouble turning down Dodin and his myriad marriage proposals. It’s very clear that Binoche and Magimel, former lovers and proud parents of a grown daughter, still have a relaxed, comfortable chemistry. It’s like Hùng intentionally got them back together (on camera, that is — Magimel is married to someone else) in order to give us a moving, darling portrait of a couple who not only admire and adore each other, but generally like each other. And considering that Hùng dedicated Taste to his wife, actress and art-and-costume designer Trần Nữ Yên Khê (who has either starred in or worked on many of his films), the director seems to have made this film to give the down-with-love crowd some hope. (Yes, you can actually have a long-term toxicity-free relationship with someone who doesn’t bug the shit outta you!)
You’ll have such a precious, pleasant time with these folks and their delicious delights that you might get a bit peeved when darkness predictably comes to the third act. Nevertheless, The Taste of Things is a beautifully rendered romance about two dedicated gastronomists who, when they join forces, know how to make poetry with poultry.
