Twenty years on from the end of their marriage, Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel reunite on screen in French romance drama The Taste of Things. Written and directed by Trần Anh Hùng, it is set in 1885 and centres on the relationship between cook Eugénie (Binoche) and Dodin (Magimel), her acclaimed gourmet. Bonded over a shared passion for exquisite cuisine, they are joined in their idyllic chateau by assistant Violette (Galatea Bellugi) and her young niece Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire) who is primed to be their latest apprentice.
Light on plot but with an appetite for decadence, Hùng sets his gaze on how exactly our characters craft their hearty recipes. His hungry camera swoops and shifts with the busy activity in the kitchen, obsessively following the precision of their processes. It plays like the most cinematic M&S ad you’ll ever see for large sequences and watching on an empty stomach would be ill-advised.
Away from the cooking, the narrative is less engaging; we see Dodin schmooze with his upper-class guests and fuss over Eugénie, asking for her hand in marriage in what is suggested to be quite a persistent pursuit over their many years working and living together. When she falls ill, he lovingly prepares a meal for her in a sweet role reversal, and again the beautifully captured detail of the gastronomy takes centre stage.
As mentioned previously, Binoche and Magimel have a longstanding connection outside the parameters of this production, and so you would expect this to come across in the film. The former is great for the most part, bringing grace and warmth to the role in the culinary scenes. However, there’s something missing in the romantic elements of the script as their personal, more intimate moments feel undercooked. There’s an arrogance and pretension to Dodin in particular which makes him quite a difficult character to emotionally engage with.
With The Taste of Things, writer and director Trần Anh Hùng’s serves up a generous slice of salivating cinema. His sumptuous vision is French food-porn at its finest, but the story itself could’ve used a little more seasoning.
Cinema Perspective 