(New York) Filmmaker Tran Anh Hung and star chef Pierre Gagnaire want to defend French “culinary art” in their film The passion of Dodin Bouffantpreselected for the Oscars in the United States, an aesthetic work but also promoting “French culture” abroad.
Winner of the Best Director Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the film is a “tribute to my country which welcomed me when I was 12”, Tran Anh Hung, a refugee in France in 1975, told AFP after the Vietnam War.
The feature film by the Frenchman of Vietnamese origin, famous for The smell of green papaya And Cyclowas released at the beginning of November and features a duo formed at the end of the 19the century by the gastronome Dodin, played by Benoît Magimel, and the cook Eugénie, played by Juliette Binoche, united by a personal, romantic and culinary complicity.
Under its American title The Taste of Thingsthe film will be released in the United States on February 14, 2024, one month before the Oscars where it is preselected in the best international film category.
It was presented Tuesday evening in New York by the Pays de la Loire region and the Villa Albertine, the cultural arm of French diplomacy.
” Amazed “
A teenager “amazed” by “French culture”, the 60-year-old filmmaker said that he had been looking for “20 years for a subject on cooking” and that he wanted to “make a film about an art” which “awakens a poetry which deeply touches the viewer.
With this aesthetic work, the artist also wanted to salute what he calls “the French spirit”.
“I chose culinary art, not painting, not music,” he explained about his film adapted from a 1920 Swiss novel and advised by chef and international culinary star Pierre Gagnaire, 73 years old.
PHOTO ANGELA WEISS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
French chef Pierre Gagnaire with French director of Vietnamese origin Tran Anh Hung
The chef, three stars in the Michelin Guide (Hôtel Balzac in Paris) has establishments in London, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai and Dubai. He is also present in a New York brasserie and appears on French television in the show Top chef.
On screen, the feature film gives pride of place to the preparation of gargantuan feasts.
” Table Arts “
“In the kitchens, we build things and we defend our culture,” Pierre Gagnaire told AFP, who came with Tran Anh Hung to promote the film in the United States, before the selection stages in December and January for the awards ceremony. Oscars on March 10, 2024, in Los Angeles.
In restaurants, “we don’t just sell taste, we sell […] everything that revolves around tableware and it is also a way of defending our know-how,” insisted the chef who began his career at home in Saint-Étienne en Loire.
Pierre Gagnaire took the opportunity to confirm his “not eligible” position on the “Rural Alliance” list of the president of the French hunters federation Willy Schraen in the European elections of June 2024.
A “totally apolitical” approach to “defend” according to him an “endangered rurality” in France.
Adapted from a 1920 Swiss novel, The passion of Dodin Bouffant was selected from a list of five French feature films, including the last Palme d’Or at Cannes, Anatomy of a fall by Justine Triet.