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?
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Denne historien er fra February 12 -19, 2024 (Double Issue)-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.