Culture chat: ‘The Taste of Things’, starring Juliette Binoche
Life and Art from FT Weekend
Forhecz Topher
4.6 • 601 Ratings
🗓️ 1 March 2024
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we talk about ‘The Taste of Things’ with Tim Hayward, the FT’s restaurant critic, and our food and drink editor Harriet Fitch Little. The film is set in France in the 1880s and follows the relationship between a talented cook, played by Juliette Binoche, and the food connoisseur who employs her (Benoît Magimel). ‘The Taste of Things’ has received widespread critical acclaim – with critics claiming you can ‘taste every shot’ – and it is France’s entry into the best international film category at the Oscars. What does the film tell us about our relationship with food and pleasure? And beyond the food — what is it really about?
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We love hearing from you. Lilah is on Instagram @lilahrap and we’re on X @lifeandartpod. You can email us at lifeandart@ft.com. We are grateful for reviews, on Apple, Spotify etc.
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Links (all FT links get you past the paywall):
– ‘The Taste of Things’ is showing in theatres now in the UK and US
– The FT’s 5 star review of The Taste of Things, by Leslie Felperin, is here: https://on.ft.com/3InhBNP
– Tim is on X and Instagram @timhayward. Harriet is @HarrietFL
– You can read Tim’s latest column here. You can also preorder his upcoming book Steak: The Whole Story here. It’s out on 24 May.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I'm Lila Raptopoulos, and this is our Friday chat show. |
| 0:10.1 | Today we are talking about the new French film The Taste of Things, which is directed by Tran An Hung. |
| 0:15.8 | It stars Juliet Benoche and Benoit Magimel as two people who have devoted their lives to food as an art form. |
| 0:23.3 | He as a food connoisseur and a gentleman of leisure, she as his extremely talented cook. |
| 0:28.7 | The film is set in the 1880s, and it is both an ode to cooking and a low-simmering love story. |
| 0:35.0 | The Taste of Things is France's entry for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars, |
| 0:38.1 | and it has gotten a ton of praise for its technical mastery and luscious presentation. |
| 0:43.3 | So today, we're here to get into it. I'm Lila Raptopoulos, and I'm preparing an eight-hour |
| 0:48.0 | meal for the Prince of Eurasia. Joining me from London is Harriet Fitzlittle, the FD's Food and |
| 0:53.3 | Drink Editor. |
| 0:57.9 | She is a champagne pulled from a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea. |
| 0:58.5 | Hi, Harriet. |
| 1:02.0 | Hi, I always appreciate your introductions, Lila. |
| 1:05.5 | Watching this film, I don't know what she's going to be able to pull out. |
| 1:06.8 | But you did. |
| 1:08.5 | We did it. |
| 1:28.2 | Also from London, another friend of the podcast, the FTs resident Gourmand, our food critic, Tim Hayward. Welcome, Tim. Thank you very much. I'm really thrilled to have you both here, especially to talk about this film, because I have tons of questions and I found it really interesting. But before we get into reactions, I thought we could talk a little bit about what's happening in this film. For anyone who hasn't seen it, what do you think people need to know? |
| 1:34.3 | I think it's visually sumptuous. If you're not a massive foodie, you're going to be bored |
| 1:40.8 | rigid. But if you are, you're going to love it on pretty much every sort of level. |
| 1:45.0 | And it's slow. It's very, very slow and very gentle and very romantic and sweet. |
| 1:50.9 | Yeah. Harriet, how would you describe it? It did feel to me like a kind of like a cinematic |
| 1:55.6 | vegetable still life. Right. It reminds me a bit of that film portrait of a lady on fire where you essentially |
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