Parents' Guide to The Taste of Things

This long, slow French movie in which very little happens may seem like a trifle, but it's more like a truffle: a rare, rich thing that celebrates technique and process and beauty. The Taste of Things, like the pot-au-feu, cooks slowly over a low flame and is to be savored. Vietnamese-born French director Tran Anh Hung likewise works slowly—this is only his seventh feature in a decades-long career—and is enamored of textures, shapes, and light (if it were possible, he might even film smell and taste). Even the titles of his early movies—The Scent of Green Papaya (his masterful debut) and The Vertical Ray of the Sun—evoke the kinds of images he favors.

There's magic to be experienced here, such as watching Pauline identify the ingredients of a bourguignotte sauce, all the way down to the bay leaf, or watching what, precisely, Eugénie will do with a head of lettuce, a jarred pear, or a fantastic fish. It's also interesting to consider what Tran leaves out of the movie, specifically the prince's feast (viewers only hear the menu read aloud), or a scene that might have taken place at the end that would have been utterly conventional—and far from the sublime ending we actually get. Ultimately, The Taste of Things may show us an unfamiliar, perhaps impossible, world, but the small sensations it supplies suggest a genuine happiness.