The Taste of Things

The first 30 minutes of The Taste of Things is dedicated to kitchen work: Dodin, an estate owner and an acclaimed chef, together with his cook Eugénie, is preparing a meal for his friends. A half an hour that is almost empty of dialogue, moments filled with beautiful, poignant, tender descriptions of cooking - from the selection of the raw materials to their serving. From here, we continue to discover the relationship between Dodin and Eugénie, about the appreciation and attraction between the two. The Taste of Things could easily be dismissed as gastroporn, but as with his other works, Tran Anh Hung, with an impressionist approach to the material and the practical, expresses something about the importance of culture - and the way the meals are prepared here is no less invested and designed than any work of art - and about its central, life-giving role for us.