One Indelible Scene: A Lovingly Prepared Meal in ‘The Taste of Things’

This all will be served, eventually, to a group of men, Dodin’s friends and associates. They will trade aphorisms and discuss wines and eventually go to the kitchen to ask Eugenie why she never joins them in the dining room. (“I converse with you in the dining room through what we eat,” she explains, smiling.) Later we will find that Dodin’s greatest passion in life is not actually food, but the woman who cooks with him, and that their romance is the sort that unfolds over time and seasons very like the lettuce growing in the garden. We will even learn, alongside him, that the beauty of love is much like the beauty of a pristinely cooked meal: It is precious because it will, like all things, eventually be only a memory.

But for now we are focused on the balancing act of the kitchen, the way ingredients come together like magic. In the hubbub, Dodin finds a lull in which to conduct a lesson. Pauline’s been watching the activity with wide, fascinated eyes. He hands her a spoonful of some liquid, a sauce, and asks her to name what’s in it.

She closes her eyes and concentrates. She has no training, but her senses are keen. She starts to name elements, from bacon and red peppers to specific herbs and cognac. As she lists them, we see what’s in her mind’s eye: the elements being seared and sifted and combined, stirred together and cooked to the perfect texture.

Dodin’s eyes, meanwhile, are filled with excitement at her rare talent. Across the room, Eugenie is listening, the same joy reflected in her face. What Pauline can do is what luck cannot: She can sense the elements, and also understand the balance between them, how they come together to make something quite perfect. What’s more, she feels great emotion in the task, her pleasure as palpable as theirs. Later, when she tells Eugenie that she almost wept when she tasted another dish, she cannot explain why; it just affected her in a way she can feel in her soul.

I understand. It’s the same emotion I feel when I watch a movie like this one, where elements of joy and sorrow, humor and intensity, beauty and light and shadow combine in a perfectly balanced experience. It takes patience and skill, but also nerve and luck for a work of art to achieve elegance and piquancy in equal measure. You might try to reduce it to a recipe for success, but you can’t scientifically force a movie to work, any more than you can batter a meal into perfection like a blunt object. This attention, and patience, and care: It is what makes all the difference.