It’s not sport that’s murder, it’s cooking. This is what series like The Bear: King of the Kitchen or films like Yes, Chef! suggest. and The Menu, which have been bringing a kind of haute cuisine renaissance to the home cinema and to the screen for several years. The message is that star chefs are the new Wall Street bankers. But that’s all just cheap adrenaline rush compared to Beloved Cook, which is now showing in cinemas.
Don’t let the cheesy title put you off. It’s not superficial romantic cinema, but the (new) masterpiece by cult director Tran Anh Hung (The Scent of Green Papaya), which has two people cooking and eating for 135 minutes. The film is extremely entertaining and fascinating from the first second. But if you don’t at least make yourself a snack beforehand, will have a nervous breakdown.
Check out the trailer for Beloved Cook here:
Beloved Cook – Trailer (German) HD
Beloved Cook is completely different than you think
Beloved Cook is set in rural France in 1885. Exceptional chef Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) shares an all-consuming passion for food with her host Dodin (Benoît Magimel). Together they invent dishes and try them out. They then stand in the kitchen for hours with glassy eyes, always looking for new tastes and the perfect dish. But their shared love will soon be put to the test.
The plot description sounds like a feel-good French film covering up complex problems with cheap metaphors. The depression with “Live, Laugh, Love“answered or existential fears with a well-intentioned”Every journey begins with a first step“The fact that Beloved Cook works differently becomes immediately clear in the cinema.
World cinema
Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel in Beloved Cook
First of all, Hung’s film makes your mouth water for more than two hours. Beautiful images perfectly showcase dish after dish. Roasted saddle of veal, flounder cooked in crème fraîche, Crayfish, truffles, ice cream cooled in egg foam. Hung lures the audience into the film through the aesthetics of the culinary art, which they want to feast on until they burst.
Tran Anh Hung’s film inspires with the pure joy of life
What distinguishes Beloved Cook from a perfectly lit commercial is the minimalism with which the director portrays the extreme passion of Eugénie and Dodin. For minutes, the audience watches the happy ballet of the two, who, with the help of the housemaids, bring a masterful menu to the table. Every move is perfect, every drop of sauce, every leaf of thyme is precisely dosed. Why is this so entertaining?
Film fans have been using the term “Competence Porn” for several years now: it is intended to describe the effect of scenes in which the talent, skill, and sheer craftsmanship of a character gives the audience pleasure. In some ways, this also applies to Beloved Cook. Like the precision of a racing driver or the tactical knowledge of an officer The culinary perfection of the protagonists, who always know exactly what they are doing, is fascinating. But that’s not all.
The two characters’ dance through sensual cooking scenes has a palpable physicality, a joy of life that avoids the sterility of perfectionism. Eugénie and Dodin are sweating, dipping their arms into the fat, stuffing a chicken with mushrooms, dosing the wine with their thumbs on the bottle opening. What we’re talking about here isn’t the cold precision from series about star chefs, but the pure joy of life, of everything that nourishes and refreshes.
Beloved Cook’s big secret only becomes apparent at second glance
Even more fascinating is the imagery with which Hung provides a stage for the passion of his characters. It is so simple, so straightforward, that you don’t notice its sensitivity for a long time. The length of the kitchen scenes alone puts them in the foreground. And ultimately turns out to be the heart of the film.
World cinema
Beloved cook
The historical setting, the rural location, the power imbalance between masters and servants, between men and women, the rules of marriage and the freedom of nature: all these superficial attributes are outshone by the camera’s fascination with its actors and actresses Hung’s love for his characters.
“My purpose in making films is to find new feelings and the joy of discovering them“, Tran Anh Hung once told the Vietnamese site Talawas about his style. His affection is transmitted to the audience like lightning. His eye for the essentials is so precise, his sense of rhythm and composition is so intuitive that it almost seems like magic.
The result is a kind of meditation, a trance, a bliss about the quiet joy of the characters. Wholesome in a way that understood the essence of Wholesome. There’s hardly a better way to spend two hours in the cinema. But please eat first.
When is Beloved Cook in the cinema?
Beloved cook is running since February 8, 2024 in the cinema. In addition to Binoche and Magimel, Emmanuel Salinger (The Secret of the Two Sisters) can be seen in front of the camera.