The Passion of Dodin Bouffant: a fascinating pure sensory pleasure (review)

Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel transcend Tran Han Hung’s new film, at once a romance between a gastronome and his cook, a praise of the culinary art and a treatise on directing.

Dodin Bouffant makes a young apprentice taste a sauce. She must guess its composition and, with each element found, the sauce recomposes itself on the screen. In one magnificent sequence, Tran Han Hung has just summed up the power of his new film. The Passion of Dodin Bouffant will be a work on French culture (cooking as a total, supreme art), as much as a portrait of characters (who must learn, love, tame) and a sumptuous staging.

Inspired by a novel by Marcel Rouff, the director of The Smell of Green Papaya therefore takes on the figure of this legendary and fictitious gastronome. Above all, he takes up an anecdote from the book: after being received by the prince of Eurasia, Dodin will return the invitation and compose a meal which must impress him. Starting from this thin pretext, the filmmaker therefore combines the Epicurean fable, the documentary look at the culinary art and a sotto voce love story. First there is this sensual and sensory experience of cooking. Liturgy of gestures, postures, learning rituals captured in extraordinarily vaporous sequence shots.

Tran Han Hung films Dodin’s recipes as Wong Kar Wai filmed Ip Man’s kung fu: dizzying art of time, infinite dilation of the moment which gives as much power to a cooking gesture as to a stolen glance between the two protagonists. And like WKW, the Vietnamese doubles its artistic epic with a melodrama of lonely lovers (Dodin and his cook, Magimel and Binoche extraordinary). His mastery is that of an image sculptor who captures the slightest emotion and shapes its story in a material made of duration, smells and tastes. He sublimates a still life to which he constantly breathes new life.

Of Tran Han Hung. With Benoit Magimel, Juliette Binoche, Emmanuel Sallinger… Duration 2h14. Released November 8, 2023