Interview: Tran Anh Hung – The Taste of Things

In the Cannes Best Director-winning, The Taste of Things (aka The Pot-au-Feu) the passage of time is measured in teaspoons, tablespoons and table manners. Three decades after his playful exploration of the senses in The Scent of Green Papaya, Tran Anh Hung works from a text is about the basics: connection, simple ingredients and the passage of knowledge. Selected as France’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards, I had the pleasure of speaking with the filmmaker and got to ask about how was it to work with performers (Benoît Magimel and Juliette Binoche) when they were former life partners, the methodology employed in filming kitchen tools and how he related to the original source materials. IFC Films distribute the film this Friday.