Juliette Binoche

THE TASTE OF THINGS: two passions – culinary and romantic

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Photo caption: Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel in THE TASTE OF THINGS. Courtesy of IFC Films.

The French romantic drama The Taste of Things is the story of a man consumed by two passions – an obsession with gastronomy and a profound love for a woman. It’s also one of the mouthwatering movies in the history of cinema.

The man is Dodin (Benoit Magimel), a famous gourmand in 1884 France, a key moment in the history of the culinary arts, when the master French chef Escoffier was still in his 30s. The woman adored by Dodin is Eugenie (Juliette Binoche), not coincidentally his live-in cook.

The Taste of Things begins with a long scene (15+ minutes) as Eugenie leads a team in producing an elaborate garden to table meal, with every ingredient prepared old school, the long and hard way. Fish quenelles are formed by hand, shrimp shells are boiled into a stock, and the quenelles are pached in the shrimp stock. It takes hours for a rack of veal turned into an OMG marvel. It turns out that this is a multi-course feast prepared for Dodin and his chatty four buddies. The guys all fall SILENT when the consommé appears, and then, as the courses pile up, don’t say anything more that isn’t about the meal itself or the history of gastronomy.

The fruit of Eugenie’s labor, exquisitely photographed, are the height of food porn. One highlight is a spectacular vol-au-vent. When Eugenue shows up with a giant croissant-like thing (a giant bioche?) that she and the four buddies dig into with their hands, there were audible gasps from the audience at the screening.

There’s even a scene with a culinary Holy Grail, now illegal in the US, fabled ortolans devoured as per tradition, with the diners’ heads under their napkins. Of course gastronomy, as any human endeavor, can be taken to silly extremes, which is illustrated by a dinner for Dodin and his friends, hosted by a prince under the mistaken impression that more is always better.

Eugenie prepares masterpiece after masterpiece for Dodin until her health falters, giving him the opportunity to express his love by preparing and serving her an even more formidable dinner.

The Taste of Things is a film by writer-director Anh Hung Tran, who certainly knows his way around movie passion and movie foods (The Scent of Green Papaya).

Benoit Magimel and Juliette Binoche in THE TASTE OF THINGS. Courtesy of IFC Films.

It’s always a pleasure to watch the radiant Juliette Binoche, especially when she’s playing an endearing character like Eugenie, who keeps resisting Dodin’s offers of marriage even as she values his culinary partnership and welcomes him into her bed. Their relationship is perfectly summed up in the epilogue when Eugenie asks Dodin a question and receives his answer with bliss. She feels loved – and on her terms.

The Wife liked The Taste of Things less than I did, in part because she was less entertained by the long scenes of meal preparation, which captivated me. (I am The Movie Gourmet, after all.)

We both, however, thoroughly enjoyed the character of the culinary child prodigy Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire), especially her reaction to her first Baked Alaska and her growing into a peer of Dodin’s.

The Taste of Things was France’s submission to the Academy Awards. It’s going on my list of Best Foodie Movies. It’s now available to stream from Amazon and AppleTV..

THE TASTE OF THINGS: two passions – culinary and romantic

by
Photo caption: Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel in THE TASTE OF THINGS. Courtesy of IFC Films.

The French romantic drama The Taste of Things is the story of a man consumed by two passions – an obsession with gastronomy and a profound love for a woman. It’s also one of the mouthwatering movies in the history of cinema.

The man is Dodin (Benoit Magimel), a famous gourmand in 1884 France, a key moment in the history of the culinary arts, when the master French chef Escoffier was still in his 30s. The woman adored by Dodin is Eugenie (Juliette Binoche), not coincidentally his live-in cook.

The Taste of Things begins with a long scene (15+ minutes) as Eugenie leads a team in producing an elaborate garden to table meal, with every ingredient prepared old school, the long and hard way. Fish quenelles are formed by hand, shrimp shells are boiled into a stock, and the quenelles are pached in the shrimp stock. It takes hours for a rack of veal turned into an OMG marvel. It turns out that this is a multi-course feast prepared for Dodin and his chatty four buddies. The guys all fall SILENT when the consommé appears, and then, as the courses pile up, don’t say anything more that isn’t about the meal itself or the history of gastronomy.

The fruit of Eugenie’s labor, exquisitely photographed, are the height of food porn. One highlight is a spectacular vol-au-vent. When Eugenue shows up with a giant croissant-like thing (a giant bioche?) that she and the four buddies dig into with their hands, there were audible gasps from the audience at the screening.

There’s even a scene with a culinary Holy Grail, now illegal in the US, fabled ortolans devoured as per tradition, with the diners’ heads under their napkins. Of course gastronomy, as any human endeavor, can be taken to silly extremes, which is illustrated by a dinner for Dodin and his friends, hosted by a prince under the mistaken impression that more is always better.

Eugenie prepares masterpiece after masterpiece for Dodin until her health falters, giving him the opportunity to express his love by preparing and serving her an even more formidable dinner.

The Taste of Things is a film by writer-director Anh Hung Tran, who certainly knows his way around movie passion and movie foods (The Scent of Green Papaya).

Benoit Magimel and Juliette Binoche in THE TASTE OF THINGS. Courtesy of IFC Films.

It’s always a pleasure to watch the radiant Juliette Binoche, especially when she’s playing an endearing character like Eugenie, who keeps resisting Dodin’s offers of marriage even as she values his culinary partnership and welcomes him into her bed. Their relationship is perfectly summed up in the epilogue when Eugenie asks Dodin a question and receives his answer with bliss. She feels loved – and on her terms.

The Wife liked The Taste of Things less than I did, in part because she was less entertained by the long scenes of meal preparation, which captivated me. (I am The Movie Gourmet, after all.)

We both, however, thoroughly enjoyed the character of the culinary child prodigy Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire), especially her reaction to her first Baked Alaska and her growing into a peer of Dodin’s.

The Taste of Things was France’s submission to the Academy Awards. It’s going on my list of Best Foodie Movies. It’s playing in a few arthouses now; I’ll let you know when it releases on VOD.

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS: friendships on really bad job

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Photo caption: Hélène Lambert and Juliette Binoche in BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. Courtesy of Cohen Media Group.

The workplace drama Between Two Worlds, starring Juliette Binoche, is based on a recent French bestseller that explores workers scrambling for precarious, crappy employment amid rampant job insecurity.   It’s a harsh new reality in France, felt even more keenly in a nation where robust employment protections were the norm until recent “reforms”.

Binoche plays a character new in town, purportedly starting her life over from scratch after a bad break-up. She’s looking for a job – any job – and navigates the unwelcoming world of employment office job fairs to get a minimum wage gig with a cleaning company. That job goes so NOT well, that she ends up on everyone’s job of last resort – on the cleaning crew of the vehicle ferry between Ouistreham, France, and Portsmouth, England. (The movie’s French title is Ouistreham.)

This ferry job is acknowledged by everyone – even the supervisor – to be a hellish job. 230 en suite berths must be serviced, with bed linens changed and the toilets cleaned, in the 90 minutes between voyages. It’s physically taxing and disgusting drudgery – and it’s a race against the clock. Our protagonist is accepted and guided by more experienced local women on the crew and forms friendships.

At the beginning of the second act, there is a significant revelation, which explains some vibes we have picked up and adds another element of tension through the rest of the story, to its perfectly modulated ending.

I’ve been watching Juliette Binoche movies since The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Binoche is always glorious. That’s true here, too, in a role where she is often concealing her thoughts and feelings from the other characters.

Remarkably, director Emmanuel Carrère has surrounded Binoche with first-time actors who play her colleagues in the underclass; they are great, particularly Hélène Lambert, who is effectively the second lead, Léa Carne and Emily Madeleine.

Between Two Worlds is two movies in one – a political exposé and a relationship melodrama. At the ending, I couldn’t help thinking of the Pulp song Common People (and the William Shatner/Joe Jackson version is my fave).

The US release of Between Two Worlds is rolling out; it’s opening at San Francisco’s Opera Plaza this weekend.

THE TRUTH: reconciling your truth with another’s

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Catherine Denueve in THE TRUTH. Photo courtesy of IFC Films.

In The Truth, writer-director Hirozaki Koreeda’s latest wry and authentic exploration of human behavior, Catherine Deneuve plays Fabienne, one of France’s most iconic living actresses. Her daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche), a screenwriter living in New York, brings her family to Paris for a visit to celebrate the publication of Fabienne’s memoir.

As the film opens, an imperious Fabienne is being interviewed by a journalist so mediocre that he’s not ashamed of plagiarizing his questions – and Fabienne doesn’t suffer fools.

Fabienne is a diva who demands to be doted upon, and she is a Real Piece of Work. Fabienne has been so career-focused that she sacrificed an emotional attachment to Lumir, who received maternal nurturing from Sarah, a now-deceased peer of Fabienne’s who Fabienne had screwed out of a career-making role.

Her self-worshipful memoir is ridiculously also entitled The Truth. The book falsely paints Fabienne as an attentive, model mother, doesn’t even mention her longtime assistant and inaccurately claims that Lumir’s father is dead.

Lumir’s resentments quickly bubble to the surface, the two probe and spar throughout he movie. Each sees her own experience as a “truth”. The Truth is about their journeys to accept the other’s point of view and on what terms. It’s very funny, and, thanks to Hirokeeda’s touch, remarkably genuine.

Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke, Catherine Deneuve and Clémentine Grenier in THE TRUTH. Photo courtesy of IFC Films.

Fabienne is now shooting a movie where she plays the mother of a much younger French film star (Manon Clavel), and the ever-competitive Fabienne has manufactured a one-sided rivalry with her, as she had with Sarah. (The film-within-a-film is a sci fi exploration of mother-daughter angst which I think I would hate if it were a real movie).

I’ve seen four of Koreeda’s movies and they’re all brilliant: Still Walking, Our Little Sister, The Third Murder and The Shoplifters. I rated The Shoplifters among the four best movies of 2018. The Truth is Koreeda’s first film made outside Japan and in languages (French and English) other than Japanese.

Deneuve and Binoche are superb. All of the cast is excellent, including Ethan Hawke, who is a good enough sport to play Lumir’s tag-along husband, a good-hearted but modestly talented American TV actor. The firecracker child actress Clémentine Grenier, in her first film, soars as Lumir and Hank’s daughter Charlotte; Charlotte wants to become an actress like her grandma, and Clémentine just might attain that herself.

The Truth also benefits from the beautiful work of cinematographer Eric Gautier (Ash Is Purest White, The Motorcycle Diaries, Summer Hours).

The Truth may not be Koreeda’s very best, but it’s plenty good. Hirokeeda, such an insightful observer of behavior, can cut to the core his characters’ profound humanity. The Truth is streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

NON-FICTION: Olivier Assayas has wasted too many hours of my life

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Guillaume Canet (left) and Vincent Macaigne in NON-FICTION

I finally got around to watching writer-director Olivier Assayas’ Non-Fiction. I had been eager to see it because I generally find the French actor Vincent Macaigne hilarious, and I will pretty much watch Juliette Binoche in anything. My conclusion: Olivier Assayas has wasted too many hours of my life, and I am over his films.

Non-Fiction is a comedy of manners that revolves around the once-successful novelist Leonard, whose books are very lightly disguised re-tellings of his own sordid romantic life, and Leonard’s publisher Alain (Guillaume Canet). Alain is married to Selena (Juliette Binoche), an actress in TV cop shows. Everybody sleeps with somebody else’s partner, and everyone wrings their hands over e-books, audio books, blogs and the impending death of the book industry. That’s about it. None of it is engaging.

In 2006, Assayas, a veteran screenwriter, wrote and directed an okay segment (the one with Maggie Gyllenhaal as an actress pining for her drug dealer) in the delightful anthology Paris, je t’aime. He followed it in 2008 with the fine family drama Summer Hours. And then, in 2011, he did the excellent true crime mini-series Carlos. This was a promising start, and he developed a fan base of admiring critics.

But since then, Assayas has wasted brilliant performances by Binoche and Kristen Stewart in the Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper – two muddled messes that masquerade as cinema. And now, the off-putting Non-Fiction. I am over this guy.

SPOILER: There is one funny moment in Non-Fiction, which I shall now spoil for you, so you won’t need to watch the movie. In the last quarter of the film, the characters decide to publish an audio book read by a celebrity, and they aspire to get Juliette Binoche (who is, of course, in this scene playing her character). I’ll concede that this is a genuinely witty moment, if self-referential.

Non-Fiction is now streaming on Amazon and other platforms.

LET THE SUNSHINE IN: exquisite performance, pointless movie

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Juliette Binoche in LET THE SUNSHINE IN

The French drama Let the Sunshine In is a pointless movie with a great, great performance from Juliette Binoche. Binoche plays a divorced artist who, yearning to be in a relationship with a guy, has sexual encounters with a range of them. She churns a series of men who are not good-relationship material for a variety of reasons. And she is aiming way too low. All of this is obvious.

Finally, she finds herself listening to counsel from a character played by Gérard Depardieu; I really lost track of whether the character is a therapist or some kind of guru, whatever. But in this scene, the movie’s final 10-15 minutes, we can appreciate the most exquisite acting of the year. Depardieu is doing 90% of the talking, but the camera is on Binoche as she listens and internalizes what is being said. I really couldn’t tell you whether his advice was sound or empty psychobabble.  I was just too entranced by Binoche’s reactions.

This is the GOOD part of the movie, but there’s a problem here, too. Just when the audience is enraptured by Binoche’s face, the giant letters J-U-L-I-E-T-T-E-B-I-N-O-C-H-E run across it. It’s so distracting that my first thought was that the movie’s projection had become garbled.  But no – it’s the CLOSING CREDITS scrolling across the most profound performance of the year. Unpardonable.

It should be noted that this story of a woman’s yearnings is told by the woman writer-director Claire Denis. I liked, but don’t otherwise remember much about her 2008 35 Shots of Rum; I was dismayed by her 2013 Bastards.  Let the Sunshine In is another whiff.

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA: a muddled mess

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CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA
CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA

Man, what a disappointment! Somehow the Clouds of Sils Maria lets us lose interest in the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche and wastes a performance by Kristen Stewart that made her the first American actress to win a César (the French Oscar). But it’s just a muddled mess.

Binoche plays a Margot Channing-aged actress, and Stewart plays her personal assistant. The star is about to take the older woman role in a play that launched her career (in a younger role to be played by the star of a Hollywood comic book movie). As the movie begins, the play’s author dies and the Binoche character must deal with the loss of her mentor. She’s also going through a difficult divorce and fending off the advances of a onetime co-star, and generally being pretty difficult amid her midlife crisis. None of this interesting and some of the story is confusing to boot.

The only time that Clouds of Sils Maria perks up is when Chloë Grace Moretz shows up as the younger actress, a train wreck who is the epitome of paparazzi-bait . (Kudos to Kristen Stewart – the Moretz role is close enough to Stewart’s real life to demonstrate that Stewart doesn’t take herself too seriously.) It’s a funny role and Moretz nails it.

Oddly, Clouds of Sils Maria is almost entirely in English (for Kristen Stewart?), and Binoche just isn’t as enthralling as she usually is. It’s also odd that a French celebrity would hire a non-French speaking personal assistant for travel in French-speaking country – what’s up with this?

I blame director Olivier Assayas. I really liked Assayas’ miniseries Carlos , but he now has engineered three clunker features in a row (Summer Hours, Something in the Air and Clouds of Sils Maria)., so I’ll have to persuaded to see his next project.

DVD/Stream of the Week: WORDS AND PICTURES: an unusually thoughtful romantic comedy

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words picturesIn the unusually thoughtful romantic comedy Words and Pictures, Clive Owen and the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche star as sparring teachers. The two play world-class artists – Owen a writer and Binoche a painter – who find themselves in teaching jobs at an elite prep school. As they spiritedly disagree over whether words or pictures are the most powerful medium of expression, they each admire and are drawn to the other’s talent and passion.

Words and Pictures contains the wittiest movie dialogue in many moons and reminds us that real wit is more than some clever put downs. Owen’s English teacher worships the use of language to evoke original imagery and also revels in pedantic wordplay – the more syllables the better. When his boss asks him, “Why are you always late?”, he retorts “Why are you always dressed monochromatically?”.

The reason that he IS always late is that he’s an alcoholic hellbent on squandering his talent and alienating his friends and family. This is a realistic depiction of alcoholism and of its byproducts – unreliability, broken relationships and fundamental dishonesty. In an especially raw scene, he expresses his self-loathing by using a tennis racquet and tennis balls to demolish his own living space. Top notch stuff.

Binoche plays a woman of great inner strength and confidence who has been shaken by the advances of a chronic illness. According to the credits, Binoche herself created her character’s paintings.

Words and Pictures sparkles until near the end. When the students make the debate over words vs pictures explicit in the school assembly, the intellectual argument loses its force and the tension peters out. So it may not be a great movie, but Words and Pictures is still plenty entertaining and a damn sight smarter than the average romantic comedy.

I saw Words and Pictures earlier this year at Cinequest. It’s available now on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Vudu and Xbox Video.

Words and Pictures: unusually thoughtful romantic comedy

by

words picturesIn the unusually thoughtful romantic comedy Words and Pictures, Clive Owen and the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche star as sparring teachers. The two play world-class artists – Owen a writer and Binoche a painter – who find themselves in teaching jobs at an elite prep school. As they spiritedly disagree over whether words or pictures are the most powerful medium of expression, they each admire and are drawn to the other’s talent and passion.

Words and Pictures contains the wittiest movie dialogue in many moons and reminds us that real wit is more than some clever put downs. Owen’s English teacher worships the use of language to evoke original imagery and also revels in pedantic wordplay – the more syllables the better. When his boss asks him, “Why are you always late?”, he retorts “Why are you always dressed monochromatically?”.

The reason that he IS always late is that he’s an alcoholic hellbent on squandering his talent and alienating his friends and family. This is a realistic depiction of alcoholism and of its byproducts – unreliability, broken relationships and fundamental dishonesty. In an especially raw scene, he expresses his self-loathing by using a tennis racquet and balls to demolish his own living space. Top notch stuff.

Binoche plays a woman of great inner strength and confidence who has been shaken by the advances of a chronic illness. According to the credits, Binoche herself created her character’s paintings.

Words and Pictures sparkles until near the end. When the students make the debate over words vs pictures explicit in the school assembly, the intellectual argument loses its force and the tension peters out. So it may not be a great movie, but Words and Pictures is still plenty entertaining and a damn sight smarter than the average romantic comedy.

I saw Words and Pictures earlier this year at Cinequest.

Cinequest: Words and Pictures

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words picturesIn the unusually thoughtful romantic comedy Words and Pictures, Clive Owen and the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche star as sparring teachers. The two play world-class artists – Owen a writer and Binoche a painter – who find themselves in teaching jobs at an elite prep school.  As they spiritedly disagree over whether words or pictures are the most powerful medium of expression, they each admire and are drawn to the other’s talent and passion.

Words and Pictures contains the wittiest movie dialogue in many moons and reminds us that real wit is more than some clever put downs.   Owen’s English teacher worships the use of language to evoke original imagery and also revels in pedantic wordplay – the more syllables the better.  When his boss asks him, “Why are you always late?”, he retorts “Why are you always dressed monochromatically?”.

The reason that he IS always late is that he’s an alcoholic hellbent on squandering his talent and alienating his friends and family.  This is a realistic depiction of alcoholism and of its byproducts – unreliability, broken relationships and fundamental dishonesty.  In an especially raw scene, he expresses his self-loathing by using a tennis racquet and balls to demolish his own living space.  Top notch stuff.

Binoche plays a woman of great inner strength and confidence who has been shaken by the advances of a chronic illness.  According to the credits, Binoche herself created her character’s paintings.

Words and Pictures sparkles until near the end. When the students make the debate over words vs pictures explicit in the school assembly, the intellectual argument loses its force and the tension peters out.  So it may not be a great movie, but Words and Pictures is still plenty entertaining and a damn sight smarter than the average romantic comedy.