For the Oscars, Tran Anh Hung and Pierre Gagnaire praise French “culinary art”

“Dodin Bouffant’s passion, “The Taste of Things” in the United States, was presented on November 28 to Americans who will see it in theaters on February 14. Tran Anh Hung’s film was pre-selected to represent France at the Oscars.

On tour in New York, filmmaker Tran Anh Hung and star chef Pierre Gagnaire praise art of cooking” French in their film The passion of Dodin Bouffant, pre-selected for the Oscars, an aesthetic work criticized in France but which aims to promote “French culture” internationally. Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the feature film “tribute to my country which welcomed me when I was 12 years old”, declared Tran Anh Hung, a refugee in France in 1975 after the Vietnam War, in an interview with AFP.

The feature film by this Frenchman of Vietnamese origin, famous for The smell of green papaya And Cyclo, was released in France at the beginning of November and features a duo from the end of the 19th century between the gastronome Dodin, played by Benoît Magimel, and the cook Eugénie, played by Juliette Binoche, united by a romantic and culinary complicity. Under its American title The Taste of Things, the 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 on Tuesday December 28 in New York by the Villa Albertine, the cultural arm of French diplomacy.

A tasty “French spirit”

Teenager “amazed” over there “French culture”, the 60-year-old filmmaker said that he had been looking for a subject on cooking for “20 years” and that he wanted “make a film about art” Who “awakens a poetry that touches deeply” the viewer. With this very aesthetic work, the artist also wanted to salute the “French spirit”. “I chose culinary art, not painting, not music”he explained to AFP about this adaptation of a 1920 Swiss novel by Marcel Rouff.

The international star chef, Pierre Gagnaire, 73, was the culinary advisor. Three stars in the Michelin Guide (“Hôtel Balzac” in Paris), the restaurateur has other establishments in Paris, Aix-en-Provence, London, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai and Dubai. He is present in a chic 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.

“It takes time” cinema and cooking

“In the kitchens, we build things and we defend our culture”declared to AFP Pierre Gagnaire, who came with Tran Anh Hung to promote their film in the United States, before the selection and nomination stages in December and January for the Oscars ceremony on March 10, 2024, in Los Angeles.

The passion of Dodin Bouffant was pre-selected in September to represent France at the Oscars in a list of five French feature films, including the last Palme d’Or at Cannes, “Anatomy of a fall” by Justine Triet. This director took advantage of the Cannes scene to criticize the French government’s policy on culture and pensions. “those who criticize the film“, which is not unanimous, Pierre Gagnaire responded Tuesday evening, scathingly, that “it’s the slowness that makes it beautiful.” “Today, we are a bit in the ‘quickly done well done’ although it takes time” cinema and cooking, says the chef.