LE MONDE'S OPINION - CAN BE AVOIDED
For over two hours, Tran Anh Hung's La Passion de Dodin Bouffant (The Taste of Things), a chronicle of blissful lov in the 19th century between a gourmet squire, Dodin (Benoît Magimel), and his peerless cook, Eugénie (Juliette Binoche), provokes much perplexity, boredom and the occasional giggle.
Adapted from Marcel Rouff's 1920 novel La Vie et la Passion de Dodin-Bouffant, gourmet ("The Life and Passion of Dodin Bouffant, Gourmet"), the film celebrates the French art of eating well and living in harmony. It's all very flat and undramatic, except for the fact that Eugénie is suffering from a mysterious illness. It's all very poor stuff, considering what masterpieces food and meals have produced in cinema – 1973's La Grande Bouffe (The Big Feast), by Marco Ferreri, among others.
Vietnamese-born French director and screenwriter Tran Anh Hung, born in 1962, first came to prominence at Cannes with L'Odeur de la papaye verte (The Smell of Green Papaya), his first feature film, which won the Caméra d'or in 1993. Cyclo, a stylized thriller set in the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, went on to win the Golden Lion at Venice in 1995. In 2000, À la Verticale de l'Été (The Vertical Ray of the Sun) was selected for the Un Certrain Regard section. Tran Anh Hung had not made another film since 2016's Eternité (Eternity), starring Audrey Tautou, Bérénice Bejo and Mélanie Laurent.
The first 20 minutes of La Passion de Dodin Bouffant set the scene. It's morning, and Eugénie is picking her vegetables in the kitchen garden – the film was shot in a château in Anjou, western France. Then she comes into a beautiful old-fashioned kitchen – stone, wood, cast-iron burners – and gets down to cooking, assisted by a maid and a young girl-in-training. A whole choreography is put in place, with vegetables to be chopped and simmered, the oven opened and water poured. Happy in the kitchen and friendly, Eugénie radiates, and Juliette Binoche serves up a satisfied smile with each of her gestures.
Dodin Bouffant, always affable, soon welcomes his guests. He generously shares his table and his impressions of the meal with his guests. Benoît Magimel, with a chinstrap beard and squeezed into his morning coat, has to be seen considering his glass of red wine and gravely stating: "Race, elegance and purity."
How did such an academic film end up in the running for the Palme d'Or and now representing France at the Oscars? To love is to eat, the filmmaker tells us, and the story goes round and round: warm colors, carefully crafted shots magnifying sublime dishes in their copper cauldrons. Three-Michelin-starred chef Pierre Gagnaire was called in as a consultant on the shoot and makes a brief appearance in the film.
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