The Pot-au-Feu – first-look review

It’s like­ly that none of us will have bestowed upon us the epi­thet, ​“The Napoleon of Some­thing Some­thing” with­in our life­times. Yet epi­cure extra­or­di­naire, Dodin Bouf­fant (Benoît Mag­imel), has already earned the nick­name, ​“The Napoleon of Gas­tron­o­my”, and with good cause. For he and his cook/​lover Eugénie (Juli­ette Binoche) ded­i­cate their dawns and dusks to fash­ion­ing meals and menus, all to be test­ed on a ​“suite” (Bouffant’s squad) of mag­nif­i­cent­ly-waist­ed local gourmands.

We’re in an idyl­lic south­ern French coun­try­side at the tail-end of the 19^th Cen­tu­ry dur­ing the pomp of rev­o­lu­tion­ary chef Auguste Escoffi­er. The indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion has bore such fruits as ice-cream mak­ers, tur­bot ket­tles, and all man­ner of kitchen gad­gets for pok­ing, scrap­ing and slic­ing. One may swoon as Eugénie spreads ice-cream in the mid­dle of two sponge cakes with a gor­geous-look­ing and over­sized wood­en pad­dle, clear­ly made specif­i­cal­ly for the task.

And their gigan­tic range cook­er com­pris­es the cen­tre­piece of their ful­ly kit­ted-out kitchen, a place which retains its immac­u­late order due to the eter­nal dili­gence of house­keep­er Vio­lette (Galatea Bel­lu­gi). Also in the mix is young Pauline (Bon­nie Chag­neau-Ravoire), a gour­mand-in-the-mak­ing who has the right stuff when it comes to palette and pre­sen­ta­tion, able to list the count­less ingre­di­ents of one par­tic­u­lar­ly rich sauce.

We have not seen Viet­namese film­mak­er Tran Anh Hung on the scene since 2016’s very lit­tle-seen Eter­ni­ty, and The Pot-Au-Feu is a very wel­come call-back to the ultra-sen­su­al films upon which he made his name, such as 1993’s The Scent of Green Papaya and 2000’s The Ver­ti­cal Ray of Sun. Bouffant’s kitchen is bathed in a warm orange light that emu­lates the glow of hot embers, while Jonathan Ricquebourg’s cam­era floats around the domes­tic space with a light­ness and curios­i­ty that allows us to mon­i­tor even the most minor of cook­ing processes.

The fore­most plea­sure of The Pot-Au-Feu is the pho­tog­ra­phy of the food itself, with Tran so ded­i­cat­ed to colour, tex­ture and sound that you can vir­tu­al­ly smell these sub­lime cre­ations as they’re lift­ed from the stove. There’s an erot­ic pulse to shots of Bouf­fant hoist­ing pre­served pears from a jar, or Eugénie pour­ing creamy béchamel into the world’s biggest vol-au-vent.

If there were a food­ie film Olympics (and there isn’t as far as my knowl­edge goes, but maybe there should be), this one would stand in very good stead to duke it out with the likes of Babette’s Feast, Tam­popo, Big Night and Still Walk­ing. It’s like the antithe­sis of the cur­rent craze of fast-edit­ed Tik-Tok recipe videos, as her you real­ly get a sense of the time, effort and exper­tise that have been plunged into each dish.

Yet the food is mere­ly the cre­ative pas­sion of Eugénie and Dodin, the for­mer con­stant­ly refus­ing the latter’s hand in mar­riage so the personal/​professional desire lines remain etched in the sand. There’s lit­tle-to-no con­flict in the film, yet that doesn’t work against the fact that this is an extreme­ly com­plex and nuance-based screen romance, com­pli­cat­ed fur­ther by Eugénie’s minor health issues. Binoche and Mag­imel are both on sparkling form, as she appears in con­stant awe of the edi­ble plea­sures she is able to pro­vide, while he sounds a cor­po­re­al sym­pho­ny of grunts and snuf­fles while prepar­ing food in a per­for­mance wor­thy of Depar­dieu in his pomp.

Even though the title comes from Dodin’s menu plan for a return vis­it from the Prince of Eura­sia (a mod­est coun­try stew to counter the prince’s boor­ish overindul­gence), there’s lit­tle com­pe­ti­tion ele­ment to the film. We float through days and meals, ups and downs, cel­e­bra­tions and com­mis­er­a­tions, as the sto­ry – with its fix­a­tion on the boun­ty of each sea­son – becomes about inex­orable tick­ing of the clock and the things we do to make our time on earth bear­able. The film doesn’t strain for mean­ing or metaphor, instead just show­ing us the events over a cer­tain peri­od and allow­ing us to sam­ple and chew over them as we would heav­ing plate of deli­cious food. Just a won­der­ful film.