Dodin and Eugenie speak sparsely, and only of practical matters, throughout this marathon, marked by a tacit air of comfort and companionship. The menu includes a quiveringly rare loin of veal, crayfish, vast ribbons of turbot drowning in white wine, a giant vol-au-vent glistening with egg wash, and a flame-licked baked Alaska - all shot by DP Jonathan Ricquebourg with a tactile, near-fleshly intimacy that resists magazine-spread sheen, and in turn says something of the people making it. As Dodin and Eugenie prepare a sumptuous multi-course dinner for friends in their large, dreamily low-lit country kitchen, they dart swiftly between bubbling, bassinet-sized copper pans that Nancy Meyers herself would envy. Theirs is a deeply intuitive partnership, demonstrated upfront in a jaw-dropping introductory cooking sequence that runs nearly 40 minutes. He devises the dishes, while she executes them to perfection, with the assistance of mousy kitchen hand Violette (Galatea Bellugi). Said people in this case are Dodin (Benoît Magimel), a celebrated gourmet living on an idyllic estate in France’s Loire Valley, and Eugenie (Binoche), his cook and collaborator of over 20 years.
The pace is luxuriantly slow but methodical, akin to slow-cooking a boeuf bourguignon, and quickened by the gradual rewards of process: the calming satisfaction that comes from watching supremely skilled people at work. With the right handling, this could be a crossover arthouse hit, courting the more highbrow among the same demographic that showed up for another Binoche starrer, “Chocolat,” two decades ago in another universe, it would sink Ozempic the way Clark Gable killed men’s undershirt sales in “It Happened One Night.” Instead, “The Pot au Feu” - titled for the classically rustic French dish of boiled meat and vegetables, which carries eventual narrative significance in this parade of fancier fare - holds its audience entirely on the pleasures of beauty, vicarious indulgence and, eventually, the human care inherent in haute cuisine, all to obviously mouthwatering but less expectedly moving effect.
At the very least, they struggle to separate the two.Ĭonflict is minimal, surprises nil. Food is the subject, the objective and the driving motor of this scantly plotted but utterly captivating love story set almost entirely within the confines of a French gourmet château in the late 19th century to clarify the term “love story,” its two human principals are in love with each other, but perhaps in love with food a bit more. Thirty years after his first feature “The Scent of Green Papaya” - a film that, among other riches, lived up to the fragrant promise of its title in its lush scenes of culinary preparation - French-Vietnamese director Hùng has returned to the cinematic kitchen for a slab of outright gastronomic spectacle on the level of “Babette’s Feast” or “Like Water for Chocolate,” only more so.
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