February 2024

The Taste of Things: A Feast for the Eyes

All images courtesy of IFC Films. Unit stills by Carole Bethuel and Stephanie Branchu. Jonathan Ricquebourg, AFC never doubted that The Taste of Things would be an impassioned ode to gastronomy. But he also understood that his cinematography could not surrender the picture to food alone. The movie’s “philosophical spirit,” he says, was described for him plainly by director Trần Anh Hùng: “One of the first things he said to me was, ‘Everything is important. Everything matters.’ We talked about how every element of the image needed to be emphasized: the heat of the kitchen, the coldness of water, the textures of flowers or stones — and, of course, the characters in the frame. For Hùng, movies are a very physical experience. He wanted to...more