The Taste of Things (2023)

Food is what connects us.  It gives us our traditions and little memories of our culture long before we were born.  Films these days are supposed to be nostalgic in the same way, and often they are not.  The film’s director, The Taste of Things, hopes to enliven both parts of our love for food.  The visual medium of seeing it and this sensory feeling of understanding food’s cultural impact on the characters in the story.

The Taste of Things was directed and written by Anh Hung Tran.  The film stars Juliette Binoche as Eugenie, a 20-year veteran cook of a famous French chef named Dodin.  Eugenie has a complicated but affectionate relationship with Dodin, and both individuals work tirelessly to entertain the chef’s many favorite friends While in conflict over their slightly romantic relationship.

This is a tough film to review because it’s very slow-paced, and while the acting is first-rate, the film’s problem is it’s challenging to tell who has the more profound affection for the other outside of the kitchen.  Does the world-famous chef really love his cook?  Does the cook really have a romantic fondness for the chef?  Neither of these questions is answered by the filmmaker, and it’s left to the audience’s imagination and thought process to guess the actual reality.  That’s the central question of the film.  The food shown as meals is just a backdrop to their overall emotional distance from each other.  I can’t yet figure out whether I like that as part of the performance and story or whether it annoys me.  I am reviewing this film over a week after I last saw it.  I still have too many questions about whether the relationship dynamic worked between those two very different personalities.  Eugenie is very quiet but loving regarding how she teaches the small apprentices the food she grew to love over 20 years.  The chef, by comparison, is reserved in his emotions until he feels like Eugenie feels and understands how much she’s appreciated.

Smaller stories in this film make it stand out, but to be completely honest, the focus is squarely on that dynamic most of the time.  The only time that dynamic changes is when disaster strikes late in the third act in a way no one expected.  I can’t say I was exactly surprised when the twist took place, but I wasn’t upset about it either.  For the first time in my writing career, I’m unsure what point the director tried to prove by having the audience watch this semi-couple for over 90 minutes.  It’s clear that to both, food was their love language and their way of communicating.  Still, the communication breakdown comes when the cooking stops.  As much as they respected and appreciated each other’s skills, I’m not sure over the film runtime whether their love blossomed as much as the food they served, making it a difficult film to recommend.  The Taste of Things is a gastronomic journey in what it takes to love someone, but whether the main characters do will forever remain a mystery to me, and I’m not sure that settles well with my stomach.