Film Review: "The Taste of Things"
Also, The Origin of Restaurants, The Inevitability of Time, And Itchy and Scratchy
The French Revolution brought feudalism to a blood-soaked end in 1789. After six centuries of serfdom, peasant revolts swept across France, unappeased by half measures and the National Constituent Assembly’s August Decrees repealing feudalism’s legal framework.
In the following five years of civil war, at least 300,000 members of the nobility were arrested; 17,000 were officially executed, and perhaps 10,000 died in prison or without trial. The manorial system dissolved, sending its chefs and other skilled laborers into a newly bourgeois society.
These unemployed chefs created what had never before existed: restaurants with a menu from which diners could choose their meal (qualification: I should properly say “European restaurants.” Restaurants have existed in China for nearly 1000 years).
“Tell Me What You Eat And I Will Tell You Who You Are”
In Dijon, a lawyer named Jean Anthelme Brillat Savarin sympathized with the starving peasants and sought to alleviate their suffering; he was forced into hiding from Royalist forces just before the civil war began. After a brief American exile, he returned to France under Napoleon and served on France’s highest court before his death in 1826.
Brillat Savarin is what we would today call a “foodie.” In 1825 he published “The Physiology of Taste, or Transcendental Gastronomy” a manifesto for the gastronomical arts which completed French haute cuisine’s journey from manor house to restaurant to the home (which Julia Child brought to American TV).
Brillat Savarain was the model for Marcel Rouff’s 1920 book “The Passionate Epicure: The Life and Passion of Dodin-Bouffant,” whose titular character, a dedicated lover of food and women, was the inspiration for “The Taste of Things.”
Ciné Gastronomie
“The Taste of Things” belongs to the “Gastronomic Cinema” genre which places gourmet food in the role of protagonist; the camera lingers over the skilled hands of the chef and follows sumptuous trays to the dining room like a hungry puppy. One thinks of 1987’s Babette’s Feast, Chocolat (also starring Juliette Binoche) (1988), and Delicious (2021).
The thin plot plays out almost exclusively on the face of actor Benoît Magimel (Dodin), whose restrained performance anchors the film. The action takes place on a country estate in 1885 as Dodin pursues his two great loves: great food and his cuisinière Eugénie (Juliette Binoche).
At this point, I must disclose a personal bias in favor of Juliette Binoche. In Fall 1991 I had returned from a summer working in the French language and I was determined to retain it with a stack of poetry and recordings.
Instead, my French maintenance consisted almost exclusively with Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “Three Colors” film trilogy (1993-1994) also starring Juliette Binoche. After dozens of hours in a darkened theater I, like Magimel’s Dodin, never stood a chance against Mlle. Binoche’s many charms and thus I may not be an impartial judge of the the Dodin-Eugénie dramaturgical dyad.
The film soundtrack consists of diegetic sounds - birdsong, lowing cows, and troubled cats outside the kitchen door. The sweet, pastoral scenes serve the film’s theme that the most sublime joys, like all things, succumb to time.
I preferred the original movie title, “Pot-au-feu,” but that is a quibble. “The Taste of Things” is filled with food, love, and humanity.
The Taste of Things is currently showing at Buffalo’s recently restored North Park Theater.
Aw! Awesome.
My friend has gout. Unrelated to your review (which I loved), but wanted to let you know.