REALMS OF THE SENSES

“The Taste of Things” and Ennio.”

- ANTHONY LANE

The stuff you learn at the cinema. For example, until I saw the latest film from Trân Anh Hùng, “The Taste of Things,” I had no idea that the French for “Baked Alaska” is omelette norvégienne. Weird. Elsewhere, the movie offers an everyday tip: gently work your fingers under the skin of a chicken and insert thin slices of truffle, the better to infuse the tender flesh. Probably a good idea to kill the chicken first.

Most of Trân’s movie is—or appears to be—about food and drink, and it is set in, around, and near a manor house in provincial France. The date, by my calculations, is the mid-eighteen-eighties. There’s a sprightly walk by a river, and a paradisiacal lunch at a long table under the trees, but we never see the bustle of a town or hear the hoot of a train. The house is owned by Dodin (Benoît Magimel), whose vocation is that of a gourmet. He has a loyal cook, Eugénie ( Juliette Binoche), although, from the start, there is an unusual blurring of social boundaries. The kitchen is Eugénie’s dominion, yet Dodin is often to be found there, helping to prepare the next meal, and at one point he takes over entirely, devising an incomparable dinner for her alone. (This is where the truffle trick comes in.) As she sits and savors it, resplendent in a butter-yellow dress with a high lace collar, one has to ask, Who is at the service of whom?