The Taste of Things

The Taste of Things (La Passion de Dodin Bouffant, 2023) — watch online the French-Belgian culinary drama directed by Tran Anh Hung, with Benoît Magimel and Juliette Binoche in a quietly extraordinary double act. The film took home the Best Director prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

Late 19th-century France. Chef Dodin Bouffant and his longtime cook Eugénie have spent decades crafting meals that leave guests speechless. Dodin is in love and has asked her to marry him more than once. She keeps saying no. His answer: do something he has never done — step into the kitchen and cook for her alone. The story is adapted from Marcel Rouff's novel about a fictional culinary genius, and the kitchen sequences were overseen with the kind of precision that makes the food itself feel like a character.

Tran Anh Hung holds the camera on pots, flames, and textures with the patience of a documentary maker. What emerges is a love story told almost entirely through what people prepare and serve each other rather than what they say — a genuinely unusual register that sets this apart from conventional romance. Stream The Taste of Things (2023) online on iFILM.