In France, cinema is known as the “seventh art” (the other six being painting, sculpture, music, dance, architecture and photography). Tran Anh Hùng’s The Taste of Things, the country’s 2024 Oscar entry for international feature, makes a powerful argument that gastronomy should be No. 8. The film, which won the Vietnam-born, Paris-based Hùng the best director honor in Cannes this year and is getting a limited domestic release Dec. 13, is a mouth-watering visual feast of sizzling meat, melting butter and fluffy, light-as-air puff pastries — all prepared for the camera by Pierre Gagnaire and Michel Nave, a pair of Michelin three-star chefs who acted as gastronomic manager and culinary adviser, respectively, to Hùng on the set.
“Hùng wanted us to have the real gastronomical experience of tasting the food…