“The Taste of Things” is France’s entry for the Oscars, a superbly shot homage to like and the nation’s gastronomic heritage with two of its greatest stars — what’s to not love?
Well, should you’re French, rather a lot, it seems.
The slow-cooking romance between an obsessive chef and his assistant, performed by Benoit Magimel and Juliette Binoche, options lengthy sweeping photographs of effervescent casseroles, scorching slabs of meat and warming pies.
It was lapped up by overseas critics and consumers when it premiered on the Cannes Film Festival this yr, and the worldwide jury awarded French-Vietnamese filmmaker Tran Anh Hung one of the best director prize.
But when it was launched in French cinemas final week, the response was colder.
“Out of touch, out of date, almost sickening…” wrote Le Parisien in one in all a number of one-star evaluations in French newspapers.
Hip tradition journal Les Inrockuptibles referred to as it the worst movie of the yr — “food porn crossed with rancid conservatism”.
Just 94,000 tickets had been offered in its first week — a lowly eighth on the field workplace regardless of minimal competitors.
Part of the disgust might lie in the truth that “The Taste of Things” was chosen as France’s choice for one of the best worldwide movie on the Oscars over “Anatomy of a Fall”.
That compelling drama a couple of lady accused of murdering her husband received the Palme d’Or at Cannes and managed to draw over 1,000,000 spectators in cinemas in France.
Some felt “Anatomy” director Justine Triet was being punished for some outspoken statements towards the federal government of President Emmanuel Macron when she received the Palme.
Triet herself reposted social media customers who mentioned the snub “stinks of revenge” and one other who referred to as “The Taste of Things” “one of the most boring films at Cannes”.
Etienne Sorin, movie critic for Le Figaro, mentioned it was extra seemingly that the choice committee felt the cliches about France in “The Taste of Things” had been the easiest way to whet the appetites of American viewers.
French audiences, nevertheless, had been at all times going to battle with its “lack of irony”.
“We dislike all the ceremony, the pomposity — the idea that we take ourselves so seriously — when it’s just grub at the end of the day,” mentioned Sorin.
It isn’t the primary time {that a} French movie has fared higher overseas.
“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (2019) was named the thirtieth finest movie of all time in a ballot of administrators and critics by Sight and Sound journal this yr, and was a success on the arthouse circuit in a number of international locations.
But many French critics discovered the costume drama about repressed lesbian love emotionally chilly — in stark distinction to their worldwide colleagues — and it offered barely over 100,000 tickets when it opened.
The French should not at all times turned off by sentimental accounts of their nation, nevertheless.
“Amelie”, the story of a girl prancing round a whimsical model of Montmartre, was a phenomenon in France, promoting 1.2 million tickets in its first week alone in 2001.
But it did set off controversy, with the all-white imaginative and prescient of Paris accused of being a far-right fantasy.
© 2023 AFP