A Philosophy of Pleasure in “The Taste of Things”

This being France, one pleasure drips into another. Now and then, Dodin goes to Eugénie’s bedroom door, seeking admittance. There is no sense of droit du seigneur; it’s more as if they have agreed upon a discreet romantic affinity, and the question of why they have never wed, and whether the knot might yet be tied, is openly aired. “Marriage is a dinner that begins with dessert,” Dodin says. The casting helps; Magimel, stocky and solicitous, is the opposite of rakish, and Binoche, as ever, is nobody’s fool, with a laugh as nourishingly earthy as the vegetable that she holds, uprooted from the soil, in the opening moments of the film. (The two actors were formerly a couple in real life, and had a daughter in 1999.) Invited to join Dodin and his friends—all of whom are rightly in awe of her—to consume a sumptuous feast that she has made, Eugénie demurs, preferring to stay in the kitchen. “I converse with you in the dining room through what you eat,” she says.