Our review of The Pion of Dodin Bouffant: a noise of pans

There are no recipes for a successful 3-star film that evokes cooking. This can be achieved in the light way of a Catherine Deneuve In Donkey Skin, “Prepare, prepare your dough…”or in the masterful way of a Stephane Audran in the Babette’s Feast. In 1983 in Cannes, the Franco-Vietnamese Trân Anh Hung seemed to have found it. He had won the gold camera, which rewards a first film in all sections. The smell of green papaya regaled audiences with its story of a young servant girl who landed in a Saigon family and got to know it by cooking for its members. Forty years later, the scenery has changed. Burgundy replaced Saigon. The dear is less digestible. They prepare vol-au-vents and Norwegian omelettes, bourguignotte sauce and ortolan.

In Dodin Bouffant’s pretty kitchen as if taken from a recipe book by Éditions du Chêne (one thinks of Proust’s Rediscovered Kitchen), we whip, we pluck, we seize…