Vietnamese-born award-winning director’s film to compete at Oscars

“The Pot au Feu” (The Taste of Things), by Tran Anh Hung, has been chosen as France’s official contender for the 2024 Academy Awards’ best international feature film.

Set for release in France on November 8, the Vietnamese-born director’s film is a screen adaptation of the 1924 novel « La Vie et la passion de Dodin-Bouffant, Gourmet » (The Life Epicure) by Marcel Rouff.

It tells the story of a chef named Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) and a gastronome named Dodin (Benoît Magimel), who have worked together for 20 years before finding they have emotions for each other. As Eugénie hesitates after receiving Dodin’s proposal, Dodin decides to cook for his beloved for the first time ever in his life.

The picture has received positive acclaim from critics.

« Hung resists overlaying the action with music, » Guy Lodge wrote in his review in Variety.

« All the better to focus on every pop and chop and sizzle of the cooking process, every soft grunt of bliss in the eating, every shared sigh or sotto voce instruction between its two entwined chefs. »

The Guardian regarded the film as « beautifully shot, » while for Deadline, it featured a « beautifully handled treatment of cookery as both poetry and performance art. »

In an interview with Variety in May, Hung said he believes his films will be a hit every time he directs a new work. He said he decided to make « The Pot au Feu » to better understand challenges that directing a movie related to gastronomy may present.

« My first challenge was to make a film that didn’t look like any others, » he said.

« The idea was to weave gastronomy into a love story and see how a man and a woman who share the same passion for the culinary art and have lived together for over 25 years form this spiritual bond. »

Hung, 61, attended the prestigious École Louis-Lumière film school in France. His work « The Scent of Green Papaya » received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. To date, this is still the only Vietnamese-language film to be nominated for an Academy Award.

In 1995, Hung won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival for « Cyclo. » He directed the film adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s famous novel « Norwegian Wood » in 2010 and was nominated for the Golden Lion.

« The Pot au Feu » also helped him win the Best Director prize at the 76th Cannes International Film Festival in May this year.

By Que Chi – VnExpress.net – September 24, 2023