\n<\/p>\n
That said, perfection is part of what these characters strive for. For Eug\u00e9nie, Tran said, \u201cif it\u2019s on the table, it means that you did it right at every moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some food movies have inevitably resorted to compromises. In an interview, Campbell Scott recalled that during the making of \u201cBig Night\u201d (1996), which he directed with Stanley Tucci, a lot of the food tasted blander than it looked. \u201cWe were low-budget \u2014 not a lot of time and long days,\u201d he said. \u201cYou want it filmable eight hours later or 12 hours later. Part of what I remember about that is that for what was shown and not eaten, you couldn\u2019t season it, because seasoning actually makes it break down a little faster.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was a funny discussion during production, he said: \u201cAre we trying to make something delicious for the actors to eat, or are we just going to make this kind of unseasoned stuff so that it looks amazing, and then we all have to act? And of course we settled on \u2018we all have to act.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, the restaurant set in \u201cBig Night,\u201d built on a stage at Chelsea Piers, had a working kitchen, something that was also crucial on \u201cThe Taste of Things.\u201d Being able to cook extra dishes is essential not just because of the potential for mistakes, Spungen said, but because film crews have to shoot many scenes from multiple angles. Matching shots of food later, in the editing process, can be difficult. (She said she spotted a subtle change in the type of greens used atop the vol-au-vent in \u201cThe Taste of Things,\u201d for instance.)<\/p>\n
The approach is different from that of cooking shows or documentaries, although those share a crucial element with their fictional counterparts: time. Tran is a fan of the other big food movie of 2023, Frederick Wiseman\u2019s \u201cMenus-Plaisirs \u2014 Les Troisgros<\/a>,\u201d which runs four hours.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople say that it\u2019s too long, but not for me, because it\u2019s very interesting to see it long,\u201d Tran said, adding, \u201cYou have time to see how they doubt about what they decide.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n