Dodin’s buddies, with their high-flown allusions to
politics, art, and literature—i.e., the fact that baked Alaska was invented by a
Frenchman named Balzac of no relation to the novelist—are good company, for him
and for us, and The Taste of Things has
a gently rollicking comic tone whenever they’re around: They’re like
professional appreciators (as opposed to critics), and they help to put words
around notions of taste that might otherwise remain remote or abstract. They
also supply Tran’s greatest image, sitting together with napkins hung
delicately over their heads to better take in the flavorful scent of some fresh
ortolans—a tableau at once mysterious and sweetly goofy. The only other major
character in the film, meanwhile, has a role as an audience surrogate that’s as
affecting as it is obvious: Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoir), a teenage neighbor who
dreams of being Dodin’s apprentice and whose facility is given its due by the
master (she decodes the ingredients in a hearty bourguignon in a single bite, like
a junior Hercule Poirot surveying a crime scene). “One cannot be a real gourmet
before the age of 40,” Dodin tells her, which is less a discouragement than a
promise: The possibility that Pauline might one day grow into a humble, homey
virtuoso like Eugénie is laced with excitement and dread.
Her
presence at the edge of the narrative activates the script’s not-so-hidden
subtexts about the cycle of life and the passage of time, which are alluded to
in a variety of contexts, some blunter than others. One of Dodin’s regular
guests is a doctor, Rabaz (Emmanuel Salinger), who, arriving late to dinner,
describes the baby he’s just delivered as having dined at its mother’s breast;
later, walking through the woods together, Dodin and Eugénie compare seasonal
preferences as a form of flirtation. He wistfully confesses his fondness for
the freshness of spring while acknowledging he’s heading into his autumn years;
she responds by saying that she prefers summer, and that as far she’s
concerned, she plans to live the rest of her life in the sunshine. Never mind
her recent and mysterious spate of fainting spells—uh oh, cough cough.
In
moments like these—at once achingly sincere and painfully on the nose—The Taste of Things skirts
prestige-picture self-parody. In truth, it wouldn’t take much, whether by
hapless accident or satirical subversion, to push it over the proverbial edge:
a teaspoon of skepticism here, an eyedropper of irony there, the faintest
garnish of self-consciousness. It’s also easy to imagine a version of this
movie that’s more alert to the story’s Belle Epoque trappings and that asks
questions about the partially starving society lying beyond Dodin’s
well-stocked pantry (Tran’s seeming lack of ambivalence about French history is
fascinating in and of itself).