Interviews

Interview: Tran Anh Hung – The Taste of Things

Published on February 6, 2024

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.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).