Here is a beautifully shot movie from that estimable film-maker Tran Anh Hung – but it’s in a genre about which I am agnostic, the “foodie” vein, in which we are supposed to swoon over all the endless gastronomic detail and mouthwatering fare, and in which food tends to be somewhat glibly presented as a metaphor for sharing, for family and for friendship. (A recent conversation with a friend ended with him saying “foodie” films are no worse than the “filmie” films I roll over for, with their endless love-letter-to-the-cinema shots of the projector beams in the darkness and well-loved movie theatres poignantly closing after 80 years etc. Fair enough: chacun à son goût.)
The Pot-au-Feu, starring Benoît Magimel and Juliette Binoche, set in the Belle Époque, is adapted by the director from the 1924 novel The Life and Passion of Dodin-Bouffant, Gourmet by the author, gourmand and boulevardier Marcel Rouff. Magimel plays Dodin, a passionate gourmet living in some style, partly based on the legendary real-life gastronome Jean Brillat-Savarin. Dodin is not running a restaurant – he’s just rich enough to do nothing all day but think about and eat top-quality food, and is looking pretty svelte on it.
Dodin’s expertise is known far and wide and he has a cook, Eugénie, played by Binoche, who is equally admired, and with whom Dodin is not so secretly in love. She brilliantly interprets every demand that Dodin lays down for her: like him, she has an instinctive, creative appreciation of the taste, texture, composition and fragrance of food, the drama and poetry inherent in the way it should be presented and consumed, and its central importance to civilised existence: the tiresome question of those who can’t afford to eat like this, or very much at all, is not mentioned and the absence of piety is probably for the best.
There are many static shots of these dishes being prepared and of Binoche and Magimel duly appreciating them, inviting our drooling at all this refined sensory luxury. I blasphemously longed for a single 25-minute shot of Magimel and Binoche trying to download the Deliveroo app on to their smartphones with only a 3G signal.
Dodin is in the habit of inviting a group of grand male friends round for regular spectacular dinners, while Eugénie shyly eats on her own in the kitchen with the maid and the maid’s 13-year-old niece, who is showing a prodigious talent for cuisine herself. One evening, a pompous foreign nobleman invites Dodin and his friend-group for dinner and tries to impress him with an absurdly over-lavish and unsubtle megafeast. Feeling compelled to return the favour, Dodin decides to invite this aristocrat back to his, but intends to serve merely the “Pot-au-Feu” – radically, inspirationally simple and honest rustic fare. (Again some blasphemy from me: I found myself remembering and preferring Anton Ego’s admiration for the signature dish in the Pixar movie Ratatouille.) But there is something else – poor Eugénie appears to be ill and Dodin may have to prepare for her an ultimate pot-au-feu of pure sincere love.
There is charm and delicacy here and Magimel and Binoche perform impeccably, though I wasn’t entirely sure they go together as the ingredients of a love story. As a foodie film, it has a great deal to recommend it and I found it engaging, though perhaps as a Dr Jekyll to the Mr Hyde of Marco Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe. Perhaps there will be a 230-minute director’s cut soon with a marathon washing-up scene at the end.
• The Pot-au-Feu screened at the Cannes film festival
