Dodin Bouffant lives up to his name. In Tran Anh Hung’s film, which will represent France at the Oscars, he spends his time eating. It is Benoît Magimel who plays the role of this gastronome from the end of the 19th century, a well-off bourgeois accustomed to receiving his friends around a table where the tastiest dishes were most often imagined by him and prepared with him by her cook Eugénie, played by Juliette Binoche.
We will quickly move on to the sentimental side of the plot of The Passion of Dodin Bouffant, that of the flesh. To emphasize the food, the one that whets the appetite, thanks to the beautiful “gastronomic direction” given to the film by chef Pierre Gagnaire. “At first, Juliette and Benoît were afraid of doing wrong. But when they came to see me working in my restaurant, splashing dishes, they quickly became more relaxed. The important thing is not the technique, but the emotion, the desire to give, explains the chef. The splash, the not-very-well-cut vegetable doesn’t matter, but the rack of veal has to arrive pink, as it should, and everything is just right. »
Coppola’s recipe
“I insisted a lot that the scenes were credible,” adds the director. Francis Coppola said that he liked to put a dish in his films and give the recipe because if the film was bad, at least the recipe remained. » But showing dishes is not enough, you still have to make them appetizing. “Seeing Eugénie immerse a whole lettuce in a pot of hot water before taking it out reduced to braise it, or throwing crayfish in ice, these are the ideas that provoke wonder,” assures the director.
In the absence of perceiving smells, the magic also comes from the sounds of cooking. “The sound is really the flavor of the image,” emphasizes Tran Anh Hung. The fire being lit, the meat sizzling, the water boiling, the vegetables simmering… “The sounds are recorded live to have a witness. But we rework them, explains the filmmaker, with paper and plastic materials that we rub and mix to obtain a more expressive sound. »
Far from “Top Chef”
Despite the very cinematic aesthetic given to the film, we are far from the hectic pace of TV shows like “Top Chef”. Tran Ahn Hung plays the gestures in real time and films them in sequence shots, which Pierre Gagnaire approves. “To cook good food, you have to take your time,” says the chef. This bias towards slowness is that of the film but it is also mine: a form of listening, of introspection, of restraint. Take the time to find the right vegetable or the right piece of meat, prepare it, prepare all this little mechanism that makes everything fall into place to obtain something beautiful, tasty, hot when needed and delicious. gourmand. »
Dishes so “gourmet” that the actors didn’t stop between takes. “When I said ‘cut’, they continued to eat and the assistants had to prepare new plates for the joints of the following shots” “Yes, there were some funny moments,” smiles Pierre Gagnaire. Because the food was good anyway. » Some actors even ended up gaining weight. “Benoît Magimel grew bigger as the days went by,” says the director. To the point of worrying my wife Tran Nu Yên-Khê, who is in charge of the costumes: ‘You have to finish the film quickly because I no longer have room to enlarge her clothes’. Towards the end of filming, she said to me, ‘Hung, you’re doing this scene unbuttoned because it’s impossible otherwise’. »