Radar: The Taste of Things

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"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are" is one of the most famous quotes attributed to the eighteenth century lawyer-cum-politician-cum-gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, whose most notable work was The Physiology of Taste, paving the way for modern food writing. In short, he's an icon of food writing and this film, The Taste of Things, currently on BBC iPlayer is loosely based on the novel by Marcel Rouff The Passionate Epicure (1924), which features a gourmet called Dodin, who is loosely based on Savarin. However, even if you didn't know all of that (and you don't really need to), this film is still a wonderful tribute, a paean to the role food can play in a life.

With two children under the aged of seven, most of the films and TV I watch is with them, and in general that means having bright, flashing images spewed out at you through the screen at a million miles an hour. How strange, then, to sit through a film where hardly anyone says anything and the only thing people are doing is cooking, chopping, stirring, stoking a stove's fire, gutting a guinea fowl, stooping over a solid oak worktop in a kitchen streaming with sunlight, and steam from the huge copper pans, as someone puts a nob of butter in a hot pan. The concept of this film shouldn't work and I can only imagine the production companies that would have turned it down upon hearing its initial premise with a 'seriously? two people cooking silently in a kitchen? and some guys sitting round a table eating it and going ooh and ahh after a consommé?' Well, quite. But they would have missed out on one of the most exquisitely made films I can remember seeing. The film was a triumph because of that. So much so, in fact, that I could have merrily dispensed with the rather limp and insubstantial storyline of the relationship between the gourmet and the cook simply to watch Juliette Binoche prepare more feasts for Dodin and his mates. And therein, I suppose, lies the only slight fault with the film, in that, aside from the poetic cinematrography, the plot of the film is really quite flimsy. However, there is a tragic moment at the end which did have me close to tears.

Maybe this lack of plot is no bad thing though, as one of my issues with something like The Bear on Disney+ is that it's all plot and very little cooking, certainly in the few episodes of it I could bear (excuse the pun) to watch. This film, though, put food at its centre and was all the better for it.

One of Savarin's other famous quotes is 'The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star.' I think there are many filmmakers and producers around today manufacturing awful, one-million-mile-an-hour films who could really benefit from watching this film, as it's a lesson it quietude, and letting the image and the sound do all the work. It was a revelation. The most memorable moment was when Binoche's character brings a steaming hot brioche to the big wooden table in the kitchen to Dodin and his five gourmet cronies and they tear into it like children. It's an image of togetherness and joy, one of many in remarkable film.