Relationships exist and endure in many ways and across many media of connection.
Many of us play games during family reunions or holidays, the focus gets shifted from the relationships to the manifest thing in front of us. Conversations cease to be daunting (or that’s the idea) and these dynamics are allowed to breathe. Focus on a convention like this allows the connection itself to both shine and hide, to be nurtured and protected. We see similar dynamics at play in Trần Anh Hùng’s film “The Taste of Things.” While the critical review of the film was quite excited, and the audience review lagged behind. On Rotten Tomatoes, the critic score is 97%, while the audience score is 75%. I attribute this gap to a growing blind spot in American culture to the latent process.
A wonderful commentary on only noticing the manifest and forgetting about the latent process underneath comes from the Tao Te Ching:
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao;
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
(Tzu 1996 pp. 1)
In “The Taste of Things.” we see a glimpse of life, love and passion played out without the “names,” or descriptions that we are so familiar with. In fact, most of the gripping emotionality goes unspoken. The two protagonists of the film, or perhaps one more than the other, grapple with the impossibility of understanding the connection they share in food as it goes unspoken. The heart wrenching love and loss of love in the film show some of the reasons for silence, and some of the unspeakable joys of not having to say “it” out loud.
What is happening in this film, much as in latent process in the unconscious or in the therapy room, is hard to describe in words. On one level, that which is complex is intrinsically hard to describe. On another level, the ineffable resists indication. And so, this review in many ways stands as a verbal acknowledgement of the importance of the unspeakable.
The Taste of Things is a film adaptation of a French novel from the 1920’s (Pot au Feu). That novel was heavily inspired by famed gourmand Brillat-Savarin’s writing as he merged his investigation of what he thought of as the science of eating with his fascination of sensualism, especially sexuality, as a whole. And indeed, while many of the critiques and reviews of this film that I have seen emphasized it as a movie about “cooking,” or “food porn,” it is about much more than just food.
Even the title is telling. In French it is “Le Passion de Dodin Bouffant.” Eating, under the painstaking level of perfection and obscenity depicted by the gourmands in this film, departs from any connection with eating in the sense of calories and nutrients. Cooking for survival does not require this kind of rigor and obsession. This film is about ecstasy, suffering, torment, unrequited repetition, wizardry and desire.
But even the French title is lacking as this film is not only about the titular character Dodin, the film is primarily about love. This love is shared between two people, and Eugénie is the invaluable “Cook” in this film. It is her hands that braise and whisk and manifest the dream and magic of the story. Her creations are intoxicating, but none greater than her relationship with Dodin.
Dodin is the gastronomical ringleader of a dinner group and Eugénie is their shining star. The whole group adore the times they spend at Dodin’s house for the loving meals prepared by his cook Eugenie. She never dines with them no matter how much though they implore her. In her mind, they do dine together, and when sit at her table they sit with her emotionality and care. In this way they take in what she views as the very best of her in her absence.
Dodin proposed to her on a number of occasions during the twenty years they spent together, and she had rejected each proposal. The two lived together in this way, cooking and dreaming and laughing and sometimes making love for decades. Eugénie said that she loved their life the way it was and feared that marriage would change it. It is only as her health turns that she agreed to marry, but her failing health would not abide.
The love in this story was guarded by cooking, by the frame and containment provided by it. In the ‘labeling of the ten thousand things,’ this love was a difficult entity to define. But it seemed that whatever it was, cooking gave purpose and safety to the two who lived out a life of love written between the lines. We as the audience are left to ponder Eugénie’s choice, one related to class, independence, attachment and perhaps any number of things. Ultimately, she chose to be a cook, and not a wife. And she wanted desperately for Dodin to be content with that way of having one another. We may likewise ponder Dodin’s desire: why was marriage so important for him?
Dodin seemed to view marriage as the reason to move down the hall, that then and only then would they give up their separate rooms to share all of life. And that is what he believed he wanted.
But in the space that intimately divided them, they maintained a passion that breathed and they were able, perhaps, to grow closer through cooking than they ever could as a ‘married couple.’
Eugénie finally left Dodin’s side, and he slipped into a deep depression. He couldn’t eat without her. His friends tried to console him by helping him to search for another cook, and each one they found was qualified but lacking. The film ended with Dodin taking a very young gastronomical prodigy under his wing and hearing news of a talented cook to help him train her. The last scene left us with a telling flashback to the beginning of their relationship when Eugénie asked Dodin if she was to be his cook or his wife. “Cook,” was Dodin’s reply, to her satisfaction.
The psychoanalytic writer Boulanger (2002) covered the impact of trauma on the adult mind and how it can paralyze the integration of fluctuating self-states and an unchanging core self. She used an example depicting the change in the art of a sculptor who was beaten outside of a gay club. After the event he found himself crafting splintered, fractured images of non-whole people. He found their images so disturbing that he felt compelled to destroy them. Time and again, she viewed this as his traumatically repeating the event of creating and destroying a fractured sense of identity.
And perhaps this is an interesting lens through which to view Eugénie. It could be thought that her work in the kitchen was time and again, crafting perfection, giving it away to others, ensuring that she would be missed be absent from her own feast. But I am not so sure, perhaps she, like her admirers, Eugénie consumed the best parts of the people she loved without risking the messy interactions defined by words and thoughts.
Perhaps the silent sentiment Eugénie evoked was likewise chronicled by author Meghan Daum who wrote a brilliant collection of essays entitled “The Unspeakable.” In the essay “On Not Being a Foodie,” she outlined her sense that our way of eating is impacted by the way we experienced our mothering, specifically our mothering through food.
Psychoanalytically, the parallel between food and ‘orality,’ is obviously nearby. In that notion orality would be a natural infant hungering for love and mothering. but I would say that this is also exemplary of the power of the latent moment, the symbolic convention, the eternal Tao and not the 10,000 things. Daum spoke about her own relationship with receiving love in her essay, and how it pertained to the “comfort zone.”
Daum defended the validity of emotionally staying in the comfort zone. For her, the comfort zone was premade sushi bought from a grocery store, for her it was dining on the unpalatable casseroles that abounded in her memory of a life lived in Generation X. For Daum the comfort zone was a place in which she did not have to feel compelled towards, or guilty of evading, a pursuit of happiness.
And while I would compel the reader not to take Daum too seriously in her sardonic expressionism, I think Daum also described Dodin and Eugenie’s love. She wanted her comfort zone, a zone in which the most daring and alive joys and pleasures are allowed to seem both far and near in her kitchen. She embraced that a little safety can be the finest spice.
Eugénie and Dodin were required to host a prince for dinner in the film. They chose to serve him Pot au Feu: boiled meat, a peasant’s dish. Notably, Pot au Feu is a dish characterized by sacrifice. In its essence it is lean and simple, Pot au Feu can prioritize broth or the meat. One will shine and the other be less than perfect.
In her life, Eugénie boiled her Pot au Feu (symbolically) with preservation in mind. And Daum chose to focus only on the meat and no adornments. Both were seeking to be free of those daunting terrors dwelling outside the comfort zone, and in some ways that is a delicate and savory choice. Living a life like that is like serving a prince Pot au Feu. It says that the greatest indulgence in life always lies beyond reach, and that life for real mortals is a compromise.
References
Tran, Anh Hùng. (2023). The Taste of Things. Curiosa Films
Boulanger, G. (2002). Wounded by Reality: The Collapse of the Self in Adult Onset Trauma. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, (38)(1):45-76
Daum, M. (2015). The unspeakable: And other subjects of discussion. Picador.
Petrini, C. (2024) Essay retrieved from: https://thenewgastronome.com/the-birth-of-modern-gastronomy/
Lao-tzu, Watson, B., Addiss, S., & Lombardo, S. (1993). Tao te Ching. Hackett Pub. Co..