Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch The Taste of Things
2023 · Trần Anh Hùng · The Taste of Things on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch a dish get made in one continuous, unbroken take. (camera)
Ricquebourg's camera drifts through the kitchen following hands, pans, and bodies as they cross the workspace, behaving like another participant rather than a spectator.
Payoff: The cooking stays whole and embodied instead of getting chopped into quick inserts.
Listen for sizzling, simmering, and fire instead of any music. (sound)
The film largely forgoes a conventional score, letting the sounds of actual cooking, pans, water, the crackle of a hearth, carry the mood instead.
Payoff: You're meant to feel the food by ear nearly as much as by eye.
Watch how clearly the stove, table, and larder connect in space. (staging)
Staging keeps the geography of the kitchen legible throughout, so cooking reads as a kind of choreography rather than a loose collection of shots.
Payoff: You can follow the labor of a meal the way you'd follow a dance.
Watch Dodin and Eugénie's hands more than their faces. (performance)
Binoche and Magimel build much of their performance from the confidence of hands that know the work, intimacy read through routine rather than dialogue.
Payoff: Their bond is legible in shared habit before a single word explains it.
Watch daylight fall through the kitchen windows like a painting. (light)
Ricquebourg keeps the light warm and natural, keyed to windows and hearth, with the burnished tone often compared to Dutch still-life painting.
Payoff: The image is doing as much sensory work as the food itself.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch a dish made in one long take, and listen for cooking instead of music.