Trần Anh Hùng’s latest film “The Taste of Things”, which was submitted as the French submission to Best International Film Oscar in last year instead of Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” (2023), is as lovely and tasty as you can possibly expect. Mainly driven by its two different main characters’ longtime relationship based on their shared passion on food and cooking, the film often delights us with not only those delicious moments of cooking but also quiet but poignant emotional moments to cherish, and the result is surely one of more memorable movie experiences of this year.

Set in the late 19th century France, the movie opens with how a middle-aged woman named Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) prepares for another good meal for her employer Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel) and his several fellow gourmets. As he helps her to some degree at her kitchen before eventually waiting along with his friends at his dining hall, we come to sense that he and Eugénie have been quite close to each other for years, and we are not so surprised to see them spending the following evening together as if they were a married couple.

As a matter of fact, Dodin has proposed to Eugénie more than once as he has come to respect and care about her a lot during all those years between them, though she is not so willing to accept his proposal simply because she prefers to maintain their current status as longtime companions. Sometimes he comes to her bedroom at night under her permission, but Eugénie is too independent to become a housewife, and Dodin understands that too well.

Nevertheless, both of them are still happy and content as sharing their passion on food and cooking as usual. While Dobin makes sure that Eugénie can get all the excellent ingredients for the meals to be served to him and his friends, Eugénie busily work on one dish after another, and this will remind you that it is always interesting to see experts doing their best on the screen. As cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg’s camera fluidly sticks and moves around Eugénie and a maid working under her, the movie vividly captures the small and big details on Eugénie’s cooking process, and the resulting verisimilitude is more than enough for you to get hungry within a few minutes. In fact, Pierre Gagnaire, a French chef who is quite famous for his high-class restaurant in Paris, served as the culinary director for the film, and he certainly deserves to be commended for his considerable contribution to many delicious moments in the film.

It surely helps that the two lead performers look quite natural and comfortable with all those culinary details on the screen in addition to embodying the shared past between their respective characters. Juliette Binoche, who has been one of the most luminous movie actresses in our time for nearly 40 years, does an impeccable job of filling her character with lots of life and charm, and we can clearly see what has attracted Dodin to Eugénie for years besides her top-notch cooking. She is your average free spirit who can sometimes baffle her admirer a bit, and Binoche dexterously fills her role with earthy elegance and tranquil dignity.

On the opposite, Benoît Magimel, who once had a romantic relationship with Binoche some time ago, effectively complements his co-star as palpably conveying to us his character’s deep affection and admiration toward Eugénie. At one point, Dodin becomes all the more determined to persuade her to accept his latest proposal, and Magimel looks quite committed as Dodin really tries his best for attaining his goal via cooking for his lover. Again, the camera closely focuses on every detail, and the result is electrifying to say the least – especially when one small but significant aural detail has us sense more of Dodin’s sincerity and dedication on his very special cooking.

 Hùng’s screenplay, which is loosely inspired by Swiss author Marcel Rouff’s 1924 novel “La Vie et la passion de Dodin-Bouffant, gourmet (The Passionate Epicure)”, also pays some attention to several other main characters besides Dodin and Eugénie. While Dodin’s fellow gourmets occasionally provide little humorous moments, the maid working under Eugénie and her little niece become more prominent later in the story, and there is a funny and touching moment when Dodin teaches the maid’s little niece on how to appreciate good dishes like he has for many years. 

  On the whole, “The Taste of Things”, whose original French title is incidentally “The Passion of Dodin Bouffant”, is a superlative human drama to be savored for many reasons besides all those terrific cooking scenes in the film, and Hùng, who received the Best Director Prize when the movie was premiered at the Cannes Film Festival early in last year, makes a glorious comeback here. Although I do not think I will ever forget how much I was annoyed and bored as watching his previous film “I Came with the Rain” (2009), I also fondly remember how much I was enchanted by his Oscar-nominated feature debut film “The Scent of Green Papaya” (1993), and “The Taste of Things” surely shows Hùng back in his good old element.

By the way, I must confess that my condition was not exactly ideal when I watched “The Taste of Things” at a local movie theater yesterday. I was rather depressed and tired before the movie began, but, what do you know, I soon found myself soothed and then energized by what is so gracefully shown on the screen, and I even did not mind several middle-aged ladies, who happened to sit right behind me, often talking a bit too loudly about whatever was being cooked on the screen. That is what a good movie usually can do, isn’t it?