I watched this on the 14th of March, 2024, at the independent cinema.
What a film. The colours, the sounds, the food.
It starts off with the main characters (a famous chef, his cook, their servant) preparing a lavish meal all day for his friends in the evening, and the cooking scenes were just lush and lavish and gorgeous. The sizzling sounds, the crackling of the vegetables, the richness of the soups and sauces, the gentle firmness of the chopping and stirring and stuffing. It was as close to a Ghibli scene as I’ve ever seen in a live-action. This continued for most of it: the plot almost seemed like a side to an ode to cooking.
I also really loved the setting - a manor house in the countryside in (I think) 17/18c France. The village life, the fruit and vegetables they grew themselves, the clothes they wore to dinner and to celebrations, the physicality of the cooking, the lighting, it was all so gorgeous and evocative and nostalgic. You could tell someone had put a great deal of thought and research into making it seem real and everyday, and not like a badly adapted historical piece where it’s just modern day with a new façade.
The plot was also wonderful though - the chef and his cook had worked together for 20 years, cooking every day, and he keeps asking her to marry him. She’s also ill, and has regular fainting episodes. After a particularly bad one, he realises he has been underappreciating her. He had invited a prince round for a meal, but he delays it and instead spends the day making the best meal he can for her, ending in a gorgeous dessert with a ring hidden behind it.
They get married in the summer, but by the autumn she has deteriorated, and she passes one night. It’s a really gut-wrenching scene, when they discover she is dead, and the funeral almost made me cry.
He’s despondent for weeks, months, but eventually a young girl the two of them invited to apprentice with them convinces him to still take her on, and so the two of them begin the process of vetting for a new cook.
The final scene is of him, the girl, and his friend setting off in search of a cook who had made a meal they thought was amazing, followed by a slow camera circle of the kitchen in the dusk light, and a memory of a conversation they had, discussing their life together and the food they had made.
I loved it. I had apple slices drizzled in acacia honey afterwards.