The Taste of Things review –Juliette Binoche stars in deliciously subversive tale of later life love
Binoche and Benoît Magimel play a 19th-century French cook and her gourmand employer in Tran Anh Hung’s gorgeous, simmering drama
Sumptuous, sensual and impossibly handsome, at first glance French-Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung’s lavish foodie romance The Taste of Things looks like just another decorous prestige period drama. But in its elegantly restrained way, Tran’s film, which is set almost entirely in the kitchen, grounds and dining room of the country chateau of famed gourmet Dodin (Benoît Magimel) in 1880s France, is every bit as radical and risk-taking as some of the showier, quirkier awards contenders this year.
Take its exquisite opening sequence. Starting with a wordless nod of approval from Dodin’s celebrated cook, Eugénie (Juliette Binoche), as the gardener hands her a gnarled, freshly exhumed celeriac root, the film then gets down to the serious business of cooking. Around 35 minutes, much of it dialogue-free, is...
Sumptuous, sensual and impossibly handsome, at first glance French-Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung’s lavish foodie romance The Taste of Things looks like just another decorous prestige period drama. But in its elegantly restrained way, Tran’s film, which is set almost entirely in the kitchen, grounds and dining room of the country chateau of famed gourmet Dodin (Benoît Magimel) in 1880s France, is every bit as radical and risk-taking as some of the showier, quirkier awards contenders this year.
Take its exquisite opening sequence. Starting with a wordless nod of approval from Dodin’s celebrated cook, Eugénie (Juliette Binoche), as the gardener hands her a gnarled, freshly exhumed celeriac root, the film then gets down to the serious business of cooking. Around 35 minutes, much of it dialogue-free, is...
- 2/18/2024
- by Wendy Ide
- The Guardian - Film News
Movies are designed to dazzle through sound and vision. That leaves three out of five senses untapped, at least until cinema reaches its inevitable maximum-immersive “feelie” stage. The Taste of Things, the latest from the French-Vietnamese filmmaker Tran Anh Hung, is one of those rare works that gives you the illusion of engaging much more than just your eyes and ears. “Sensuous” is too mild an adjective to describe the way that this drama films, focuses on, and fetishizes the food that the occupants of a 19th century kitchen in...
- 2/9/2024
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel in The Taste Of Things. Courtesy of IFC
Warning: Don’t see this film hungry! Delicious shots of delicious food in a luscious landscape fill the French romantic drama The Taste Of Things but it is the perfect Valentine’s Day movie, particularly if you are a foodie, or a romantic. A visually luscious film starring Juliette Binoche, the story centers on two people who express their love for each other and for fine food, by cooking together. Set in 1889 in an old rural manor house, The Taste Of Things creates a beautiful dreamworld in the French countryside where the abundance of the land provides all they need. The Taste Of Things is a feast for both the eyes and the hungry heart, with the bonus of the Oscar-winning Juliette Binoche. It was the official Oscar entry for France.
It all begins in the garden,...
Warning: Don’t see this film hungry! Delicious shots of delicious food in a luscious landscape fill the French romantic drama The Taste Of Things but it is the perfect Valentine’s Day movie, particularly if you are a foodie, or a romantic. A visually luscious film starring Juliette Binoche, the story centers on two people who express their love for each other and for fine food, by cooking together. Set in 1889 in an old rural manor house, The Taste Of Things creates a beautiful dreamworld in the French countryside where the abundance of the land provides all they need. The Taste Of Things is a feast for both the eyes and the hungry heart, with the bonus of the Oscar-winning Juliette Binoche. It was the official Oscar entry for France.
It all begins in the garden,...
- 2/9/2024
- by Cate Marquis
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. IFC Films releases the film in select theaters on Friday, February 9, with expansion to follow.
There is something to be said for a simple dish made with the best ingredients by a trusted hand. Just as a perfect omelet made by a lover is more satisfying than an eight-hour feast laid on by a Prince, so it follows that a film like “The Pot-au-Feu” (later retitled for American audiences as “The Taste of Things”) works, not in spite of, but because it focuses on executing its basic premise with enrapturing attention to detail. This is a story about love and food, which it presents as the same thing.
Sight unseen, it was always a mouth-watering prospect: two delicious French actors – Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel – feeding each other in Tran Anh Hung’s adaptation of a 2014 graphic...
There is something to be said for a simple dish made with the best ingredients by a trusted hand. Just as a perfect omelet made by a lover is more satisfying than an eight-hour feast laid on by a Prince, so it follows that a film like “The Pot-au-Feu” (later retitled for American audiences as “The Taste of Things”) works, not in spite of, but because it focuses on executing its basic premise with enrapturing attention to detail. This is a story about love and food, which it presents as the same thing.
Sight unseen, it was always a mouth-watering prospect: two delicious French actors – Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel – feeding each other in Tran Anh Hung’s adaptation of a 2014 graphic...
- 5/24/2023
- by Sophie Monks Kaufman
- Indiewire
There’s food porn, which shows like Chef’s Table and Top Chef, not to mention last year’s horror hit movie The Menu, have turned into widely popular entertainment. And then there’s art house food porn, a subgenre that possibly dates back to Marco Ferreri’s 1973 satire La Grande Bouffe, and whose other examples include Babette’s Feast, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Tampopo, Chocolat and Like Water for Chocolate. The latter films tend to be made in a language other than English, and they’re less about chefs competing for Michelin stars, or glowing reviews from Pete Wells, than about food as a way of life.
Where else but France, then, as the setting for the latest, and certainly one of the most appetizing, art house food porn flicks to come along in a while? Tràn Anh Hùng’s The Pot-au-Feu (La Passion du Dodin-Bouffant) is...
Where else but France, then, as the setting for the latest, and certainly one of the most appetizing, art house food porn flicks to come along in a while? Tràn Anh Hùng’s The Pot-au-Feu (La Passion du Dodin-Bouffant) is...
- 5/24/2023
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
In the rose-gray light of dawn, Juliette Binoche strides through a verdant kitchen garden, wearing a straw hat as wide and undulating as an ocean wave. She plucks a majestically large, gnarled celeriac from the earth and sniffs it deeply and fondly, as if inhaling mythical ambrosia, and takes it back to the house. This is how Tràn Anh Hùng’s “The Taste of Things” opens, which is to say on a note of sensory reverence and a hint of kitsch, in knowing thrall to one of the less pretty vegetables in nature’s cornucopia. There are people — this critic included — who will watch this scene and immediately sense with a hungry tingle that the film to come has been made expressly for their palate, and there is everyone else. “The Taste of Things” is not for everyone else, and that’s just fine.
Thirty years after his first feature...
Thirty years after his first feature...
- 5/24/2023
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
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