The Taste of Things: A Sensational Date-Night Film Breathes New Life Into Old Delectables

Traditional haute French cuisine meets love and food recommendations for the soul...

Feb 13, 2024

The Taste of Things (2023) Film Flavor Review

Film Review: ★★★★

Food Review: ★★★★★

Set in the late 19th-century French countryside, The Taste of Things (titled La Passion de Dodin Bouffant in France) is a meditation on two of our most basic needs: food and love.

Eugénie, an esteemed live-in cook, has worked for the famed gourmet Dodin for twenty years. Somewhere along the way, the pair fell in love, and have dedicated their lives to creating and appreciating the finest forms of the culinary arts.

Dodin has proposed many times but Eugénie doesn’t understand why their partnership needs the formality of marriage. When Dodin realizes their health is waning and they aren’t getting any younger (they are in what Dodin calls the “autumn” season of life), he decides to turn the tables and cook for Eugénie.

The film is loosely based on the 1924 Marcel Rouff novel La Vie et la Passion de Dodin-Bouffant, Gourmet (The Passionate Epicure), which in turn is inspired by the early 19th century French gourmet Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (a.k.a. the guy the fancy cheese is named after.)

Brillat-Savarin is best known for penning Physiologie du Goût (The Physiology of Taste), a book filled with his thoughts on eating well, with hot takes such as, “The table is the only place where one does not suffer, from ennui during the first hour.” Indeed, The Taste of Things supports his theory; the film is over two hours long, but like any good meal, feels as if it goes by too quickly.

All’s Fair in Love and Food

In the film, it’s evident that Eugénie and Dodin use food and cooking as their love language. Their deep understanding of one another is expressed in the kitchen and at the dining table. When it comes to friends, Dodin and his fraternity of fellow male gourmets seem to express their feelings of care and appreciation for one another solely through discussing menus, dishes, chefs, and wine pairings.

“There’s a big connection between love and food,” Juliette Binoche (Eugénie) told Deadline Hollywood.

In real life, the lead actors, Benoît Magimel and Juliette Binoche, were once a couple and share a daughter together, but have been separated for twenty years. Across many interviews, the exes have described the experience of shooting the film as healing for their relationship and their family. After years of barely speaking, they say their daughter was able to witness, on screen, her parents slowing down, getting along, and sharing love for one another.

It is fitting, then, that French-Vietnamese Director Tran Anh Hung dedicated The Taste of Things to his wife Trần Nữ Yên Khê (who serves as the film’s costume designer and acted in Hung’s acclaimed 1999 film The Scent of Green Papaya.) Whether the medium is food or film, the creation of a masterpiece can be far more romantic than words.

The Menu in The Taste of Things

Though the first third of the movie is dedicated to the preparation of a single meal, the film does a shockingly good job of justifying its lengthy runtime. Many scenes lack the traditional forms of conflict we’ve come to expect in our movies, but there is so much being communicated on screen that it feels entirely correct. The film balances light and shadow, happiness and sorrow, mouth-watering cooking, educated tasting, and climactic consumption.

Baked Alaska, veal loin, and milk-poached turbot cooked in a turbot-shaped pan are just a few of the dishes audiences may crave, or create an entirely new appetite for, after watching this film.

The dishes are as dazzling to the eye as Sofia Coppola’s desserts in Marie Antoinette or again Juliette Binoche’s confections in Chocolat, yet far more fragrant.

Perhaps it’s because all of the cooking and on-screen food was real (spare the ortolans, a now-illegal French delicacy), but between shots filled with steam and smoke, sounds of sizzles and splashes, the film plays such tricks on the mind that it leaves you convinced you can smell a broth or a sauce through the screen.

Scored only by the sounds of songbirds chirping, peacocks meowing, and roosters crowing in the morning, The Taste of Things underlines the importance of letting our inside lives bleed into the outside, living with nature and not against it. And, what could be more natural than real, delicious, whole foods?

Food + Drink Recommendations

In December, the TriBeCa, New York restaurant Frenchette served a limited-time menu of filled with the indulgent, rich dishes featured in the film, including duck ballotine, pot-ae-feu, and baked Alaska. While it’s no longer on offer (silly, considering the film’s wide release is this week!), gastronomes looking for a taste of the dishes featured in the film can try these traditional fine dining recipes that have come highly recommended by fans of French haute cuisine.

Recipe Recommendations

A Quick Note On Underwater, Sea-Aged Wine:

In The Taste of Things, Dodin gives Eugénie a sip of wine from a bottle that had been sitting at the bottom of the ocean for half a century due to a shipwreck.

While “underwater wine” is quite the phenomenon in the sommelier world today, I couldn’t find any evidence of wine bottles being retrieved from the ocean floor in the 1800s. I did, however, learn of a recently discovered 1840s shipwreck that left over one hundred champagne bottles, from well known brands like Veuve Clicquot, at the bottom of the ocean, along with other much more recent ocean-wine discoveries.

Consequently, the Veuve Clicquot brand is now working on expanding its “cellar of the sea” aging process. While ocean-aged wine is essentially prohibited in the United States, the FDA seems to be in the process of looking into it and may just allow some underwater wine to enter our borders soon.

Valentine’s Day Plans

Releasing in many U.S. theaters on Valentine’s Day 2024, I can personally vouch for The Taste of Things as a romantic date night movie fit for couples growing old together and those who would like to do so. (I will say, if you are not watching at an Alamo Drafthouse, Nitehawk Cinemas, The Neon or a similar dine-in movie theater, please dine beforehand, lest you end up like the critics at Cannes, many of whom made the mistake of viewing this food-focused film on an empty stomach.)

Of course, if The Taste of Things isn’t in the cards this Valentine’s Day, but your beau still has their heart set on dinner + a movie in, the four films linked below might just do the trick!