The Taste of Things (2023)

I cannot say what it is like to watch this movie if you do not like to cook or to eat, but as someone who loves to cook and also to eat it is immensely pleasurable. And you know it from the opening scene--why? Because it is 38 minutes long and it shows two people, and their two young assistants, preparing a meal in a big country kitchen. The meal is intricate, and multiple courses are being prepared simultaneously. The camera glides through the kitchen, following the characters as they bring a handful of vegetables to an already hot pan on the stove, circling back to the chopping on a nearby table. The camera never stops moving. What we are doing, for 38 minutes, is watching these people cook, and, naturally, drooling over the meal being prepared before our eyes. This scene is an amazing feat, so much so that there's satisfaction when you watch the guests in the dining room taste the food, savoring every bite, not even needing to say a word. The pleasure is palpable. It extends to the growing of the food as well--there is attention to detail at every step, from where the food starts to ending up on the table and being consumed. This is also a love affair between two people--Dodin and Eugénie have been companionably working side by side for twenty years. Their story unfolds in its own time, in its own way. Nothing is pushed. Nothing is heightened artificially. The devotion to food is both real and metaphor: how we prepare food, the care we take, indicates how we feel for each other. But it's also the thrill of the preparation in and of itself.The kitchen feels like a place you know, or at least a place you'd like to enter into. The details of cooking without electricity, without plugged-in appliances, is attended to in great detail. This is so so good, do not miss it. I see why France picked this as their International Film submission, it captures what I love about the French food culture.