The real star of The Taste of Things isn’t Juliette Binoche

This in an Epicurean epic about loving food, loving cooking and loving doing so for someone you love. But it wasn’t to my taste.

Juliette Binoche, as peerless cook Eugenie, starring in the film, The Taste of Things. Picture: Carole Bethuel

The advertised stars of the French romantic drama The Taste of Things are Juliette Binoche and her ex, Benoit Magimel, a pairing that stirs the inner analyst when it comes to the bedroom scenes.

The real stars, however, are the ingredients of the meals cooked and eaten by a cook, Eugenie (Binoche), and a gourmand, Dodin (Magimel), who live together on a country estate in late-19th century France. In the sumptuous opening, a veal loin steals scenes. When a turbot flops into the limelight, the human actors pay their respects. If you like close-ups of someone peeling a boiled egg or gutting a fowl, this may be the film for you.

It’s not to my taste and as I watched I worried the reason was my uninterest in gastronomical matters. That may be partly true but there’s more to it than that. I have no interest in basketball, for example, but I think Ben Affleck’s 2023 drama Air, about Michael Jordan and Nike, is terrific. In this film, written and directed by Vietnamese-French filmmaker Tran Anh Hung, Oscar nominated for his 1993 debut The Scent of Green Papaya, there’s not much of a story beyond the haute cuisine.

The plot strands are: Eugenie and Dodin sleep together but have separate bedrooms. He’s asked her to marry him numerous times over 20 years but she has said no. Now, in mid-life, she is suffering fainting spells. There’s a secondary story in which Dodin, “the Napoleon of culinary arts”, is preparing a feast of French fare for the visiting prince of Eurasia, a man accustomed to eight-hour meals. Here I did think fondly of Monty Python’s Mr Creosote.

These plots do develop but ultimately, and rather quickly given what transpires, it comes back to the meals, and while their preparation is gloriously filmed, I found it boring. I wanted action outside the kitchen, as in my favourite food movie, the 1973 sci-fi thriller Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston.

This in an Epicurean epic about loving food, loving cooking and loving doing so for someone you love. There’s nothing wrong with that but whether it needs to be served over eight courses is another question.

The Taste of Things (PG)

French language with English subtitles

145 minutes

In cinemas

★★½