THE RIGHT INGRDIENTS

Oscar nominee Tran Anh Hung, who won Best Director at Cannes last year, evolves the language of cinema to present the simple beauty of Vietnam

- Zabrina Lo

Vietnamese-born French film director and screenwriter Tran Anh Hung likes a good challenge. “Oh, I don’t cook,” he says. That didn’t stop him from adapting Marcel Rouff’s 1920 novel The Passionate Epicure into a 136-minute film, The Taste of Things (2023), made up largely of cooking scenes. Dishes included some of the most iconic French recipes—and there was no acting when it came to preparing them: Tran insisted that “everything needs to be real in this movie”, meaning the film’s stars Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel had to know how to prepare the food and feel confident doing it.

Tran reveres both cooking and filmmaking as artforms. “I’ve always wanted to make a movie about an art. I chose food because everything could be real: from the men and women working their [culinary] craft to the transformation of the meat and vegetables.”

Praised for its poetic visuals, harmonious colour palette and tender portrayal of a burgeoning relationship, Tran’s film was selected as the French entry for Best International Feature Film at this year’s Oscars. He had already been named Best Director at Cannes last year, defeating nominees such as Wes Anderson for Asteroid City (2023) and Hirokazu Koreeda for Monster (2023), both known for their distinctive visual aesthetics.