Harry here with Capone giving us the dish on a French film that is apparently beginning to spread across the country right about now. From the sound of it... sounds like something to catch. Here ya go...
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago yet again to add an additional layer of torment to your day. I wanted to alert people to an excellent little French film that will be slowly creeping its way across the nation in the next few weeks called A MATTER OF TASTE (UNE AFFAIR DE GOUT--and there is nothing tastier than a little gout).
In this film we meet Frederic Delamont (Bernard Giraudeau from WATER DROPS ON BURNING ROCKS and RIDICULE), a man whose tastes are so refined that he feels the need to hire a full-time food taster, not to check for poisons but to make certain that the food is prepared perfectly for his discriminating taste buds. Delamont is also a successful businessman and a man of great wealth and power. He meets Nicolas (Jean-Pierre Lorit from ALICE AND MARTIN and THREE COLORS: RED), a waiter whom he offers the job to taste his food. It’s clear early on that Delamont values Nicolas’s talents as a taster above all others and he pays him a great deal of money;this enrages many of his other long-time employees and aides. It’s a strange and powerful symbiotic bond the two men form, not exactly sexual but still full of a passion that borders on obsession.
Nicolas has a girlfriend, Beatrice (Florrence Thomassin), whom he lies to about what he’s doing for a living. His working relationship and flourishing friendship with Delamont is keeping Nicolas away from Beatrice a great deal, something that doesn’t sit well with her. Not surprisingly when obsession is concerning, the relationship between the two men takes a turn for the worse, careening toward an unpleasant conclusion.
In only his second feature, director Bernard Rapp (most of his prior work has been in television and as a journalist) executes his film with a slightly cold and distancing hand that is entirely suited to this material. What results is a movie that starts out rather light and grows heavy, almost oppressively so, by the end. The mind games Delamont forces Nicolas to partake in are often cruel and hurtful, and their final dealing with each other is an exercise in brutality.
The structure of the film is told in flashback while most of the main characters are being interviewed by a police magistrate (the legendary Jean-Pierre Leaud), and its pretty clear all the way through these interrogation scenes that Nicolas has committed a terrible act against Delamont. But knowing this doesn’t undercut the growing tension that builds in A MATTER OF TASTE. It’s a terrific film that reminds us that you don’t have to be trailer trash on “The Jerry Springer Show” to get involved in a freaky, paranoid relationship. The film opens in Chicago at Landmark's Century Centre Cinema on February 22. Look for it at an art house near you.
Capone
