French-Vietnamese auteurTrần Anh Hùngcrafts a modern classic inThe Taste of Things. His beautifully told period romance between Dodin (Benoît Magimel), a celebrated chef, and his longtime cook and lover, Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) will take your breath away. Trần lingers over their cooking in a gastronomic celebration of love, artistry, and sensuality. His efforts won Best Director at last year’sCannes Film Festival. The film was also chosen as France’s entry for Best International Feature at the upcoming 96th Oscars butwas shockingly snubbed. Trần speaks honestly about his profound disappointment, “The heartbreak was over three days after. I made a very good movie. It’s a gift to the audience. It was enough for me somehow. I don’t need more.”
We were fortunate to have Trần for an extended period of time. He goes remarkably in-depth with extraordinary revelations about the characters, his inspiration, expert shooting methods, and the cast humorously gaining weight on set. Be warned, a major spoiler is clearly disclosed. Please read below, or watch above, our interview with the sublime Trần Anh Hùng.
Sources of Sensuality
The Taste of Things
MovieWeb:I congratulate you on an amazing film. I’ve seen it three times. You’re an acclaimed filmmaker, but now you’re going in a completely unexpected direction with French period gastronomy and romance. Talk about the source material. What made you want to write the screenplay and be inspired to make this film?
Trần Anh Hùng:Oh, yes, I found a book [laughs]. I quite liked it. In the book, there were some pages about how people talk about food. It surprised me. I wanted to share it with the audience. I decided to adapt the book, but I didn’t like the story told in the book. I made up another story that came before the book. I found that inmovies with food, most of the time, we start very well with the food, with the cooking scenes, and then the drama story took over. We don’t see it too much. I want you to have a lot of cooking scenes and try to find a way to create a balance with the main story, which is a love story between Dodin and Eugénie. That was the whole idea of this movie.
MW:There is a sensual artistry when Dodin and Eugénie are cooking the fish. Then, when you see them later at night, he’s gently stroking her back in a similar way. Is there meant to be an erotic connection?
Trần Anh Hùng:Well, I think that’s simply because food and love are the two sources of sensuality in our life. It has to do with our habits.When you cook, you need your hands, you touch meat, fruit, and vegetables. You use a lot of water. You play with fire. So all this is something about the hands and then, with love, of course, it’s also hands and skin, and the taste. I don’t know why, but when I was a child, I was always fascinated by my hands. When I see someone crafting something, I can spend a day watching them doing it.
MW:Let’s discuss your camerawork, specifically the cooking scenes, which are masterful. There’s an intimacy where you move the camera to the overhead shot, and then you see the individual at work. Even when they’re walking, when Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire) and Violette (Galatea Bellugi) are carrying the plates up and down the stairs. Why was it so important to actually show the delivery, the presentation?
Trần Anh Hùng:I think that’s for me. The cinema is an incarnation. It means that you put ideas, dialogue, and stories in the body of the actors. I really like to see the body expressing something in the movie. When I try to find the place to shoot the movie, the most important thing is the circulation between rooms, between places. I want to see the body walking, going through these spaces to get somewhere. For me, it has a sensuality to it. And it’s also something that is very gracious to see the body moving. That’s why I like these long texts, with people walking around and delivering things. Also, when you see someone carrying a dish, and walk a long time, you create assessments. How all these will be received by the person at the other end of the road.
A Ballet of Harmony
MW:You’re filming primarily in the château, which is very confined. It’s hard to keep everything straight from setup to setup, but you’re cooking. There’s fire, smoke, steam, and edibles that can degrade. Talk about working with your culinary advisors to make those scenes fluid. What problems did you have filming the cooking scenes?
Trần Anh Hùng:The problem I had with filming the cooking is really mine, because working with [Chef] Pierre Gagnaire, a consultant on the set, it’s someone else’s mission. Pierre Gagnaire decides how we are going to see the food in the movie. I rely on this idea of harmony. I need to create a kind of ballet to express this idea of harmony to the audience. This was something very complicated to achieve. For instance, when I have a long shot, and I have to go from one dish to another dish, with the right state of cooking of this other dish, it’s very complicated to put everything together, and how to combinethe camera movementwith the movement of the actors, in that I would like to be very free with no marks on the ground.
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Spoiler alert. Skip ahead to the next section if you want to avoid spoilers.
MW:Let’s move on to your sublime casting. Eugénie and Dodin have this 20-year romance. He wants to marry her, but she’s still afraid of being his wife. The romance starts with a simmer and then goes to a boil in that masterful climax presentation. Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel were previously married. Did that help to develop the romance in the film?
Trần Anh Hùng:I think the beauty of the relationship comes from the fact that she always refuses to be his wife. By doing so, she puts some distance between him and her. She knows thatshe’s going to die. And then she decided to give him what he was asking for a very long time. I think that her decision to marry him came before the moment where he cooked for her. I mean the cooking here is not that convincing, but we can see the expression of love from Dodin. The decision was made before that by her. We can guess that it was the case because she’s the one who would like to train Pauline. It’s a way for her to somehow give Dodin a daughter. After her death, he would need to go back to life. He can keep the promise that she made to Pauline to train her. And by doing so, he make a life again. I think it’s a very profound idea. It’s something that is really beautiful in the character. She managed everything before she died.
The Sexiest Line
MW:That is such a profound response. I really appreciate that revelation. Can we discuss perhaps the most memorable scene before the proposal, when Dodin asks if he can watch Eugenie eat?
Trần Anh Hùng:You said the right line because, for me, it is the sexiest line in the movie. Can I watch you eat? You know, it’s so intimate. It’s something that is so unusual. She laughs because of this line. I think that it’s one of my favorite lines in the movie. Very simple, I cannot say better than that. Dodin was anxious in the kitchen because he’s going to cook for a very good cook. How to surprise her? How to be creative?
Trần Anh Hùng:In the movie, you have a moment where Dodin says that there is only 13 years between the death of Marie-Antoine Carême and the birth of Auguste Escoffier, the man who brought cuisine to modern time. They make the evolution of cooking in France. What he’s doing for her is the big beginning of the modern cuisine that we see today. Especially with the oyster and caviar, the way it is done. It was not from that period. He tries something new because he needs to surprise her.
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MW:You won Best Director at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Were you disappointed to not get an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature?
Trần Anh Hùng:Yes, of course, I was disappointed, but the heartbreak was over three days after. I think back and, you know, I made a very good movie. It’s a gift to the audience. It was enough for me somehow. I don’t need more.
MW:That’s a brilliant answer. Was there ever a day on set when you were tired of food?
Trần Anh Hùng:No, no, no, not at all. Because everything with this work was real, I didn’t want to have a food stylist who would use something that was not edible, to make the food beautiful. I didn’t want it. I want everything real. So that at the end of the day, we can take home what we cook for the scenes. Everyone took something home for dinner. For the actors, when I said cut, they keep on eating. They finish the dish. The assistants were telling them to hurry up because they need to reset everything [laughs]. They can wait. So my wife [Trần Nữ Yên Khê]created the costumes. She had to enlarge them day after day until the end of the shooting. She said, today, you are going to shoot the scene unbuttoned because it cannot enlarge anymore [laughs].
The Taste of Thingswill be released theatrically on February 14th from IFC Films.
