Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.
A "French paradox" that gets a lot of attention is about their food. How can they eat large meals filled with cheeses and other fatty foods while suffering little coronary disease and few heart attacks? Research suggests the wine they drink may help keep their arteries clear, which could be helpful to the rest of us if it turns out to be true.
We already benefit from another paradox about the French. How is it that a country widely ridiculed for its adoration of Jerry Lewis can nurture the people who create some of the world's most compelling and amusing films? French cinema has given us many wonderful entertainments, movies which are scripted with intelligence and maturity and which highlight characters who are fully developed people instead of compilations of quirks that test well with preview audiences.
The Taste of Others (2000; written by Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri; directect by Jaoui) is one of these delights. Its themes are modest, but universal. Almost every viewer will relate to something in it. The ensemble cast works well together, and none of the six or seven main actors overshadows the others. Their characters are so real that they too seem familiar. This quiet film has the power to make one understand better the real-life friends or acquaintances that one recognizes in the make-believe people on screen.
At the center of the story are Castella, a wealthy French industrialist (played by co-writer Bacri, who is married to director Jaoui) and Clara (Anne Alvera), whom he hires to teach him English. His pursuit of material success has left him unfamiliar with the arts. She is an actress with pretentious friends who make fun of people like Castella.
At first, Castella has no use for Clara because her method of teaching isn't "fun." But then his wife (Christiane Millet) makes him attend a local production of Jean Baptiste Racine's Berenice because their niece is in it. His wife complains about the costumes and he gripes that the play is in verse. But then he notices an attractive actress and his appreciation of the production grows. He is surprised to realize that she is his English teacher, of whom he is now enamored.
His infatuation fuels a desire to find romance with Clara. He attends art exhibits and starts frequenting a bar in which she and her friends meet. But Clara is oblivious because she is concerned about being single at 40 and still having to worry about paying the rent. He gazes longingly at her and she doesn't notice. He shaves his mustache because he overhears her telling a friend she doesn't like mustaches. His sacrifice escapes her attention.
Finally, he professes his love in a poem he writes for her in English. He includes mention that his affection is for a woman "who teaches me English." Clara is stunned into silent, awkward disbelief. With the sensitivity of a man whose life is defined by his company's bottom line, Castella misjudges her response. He repeats the line he thinks she didn't understand, and adds, "Do you understand?"
She discourages his affections gently but firmly. But much later there is a hint that their relationship may change. That remains unclear at the movie's end, and the subtlety with which it is suggested will charm anyone who appreciates films that illuminate some of life's uncertainties without resolving everything neatly for a pat finish.
Along the way, Castella meets some of Clara's friends, who are actors and artists and who are contemptuous of his lack of sophistication. They greet his suggestion that they perform comedies instead of tragedies by promising to stage plays by such mirthful masters as Ibsen and Strindberg.
But it becomes clear that Castella is not as boorish as they think him to be, and they are not as cultured as they like to believe they are. The introduction of an apparent boob into a group of smug sophisticates is reminiscent of the French comedy The Dinner Game (1998), which is funnier than The Taste of Others. But that film's satire demands that the characters be drawn so broadly that identifying with them is impossible. In The Taste of Others, identifying with the characters is almost unavoidable.
Other characters who figure prominently in the story are Castella's driver and his bodyguard, both of whom are involved in affairs with a bartender (played by director Jaoui) who deals hashish on the side. Those affairs are sexual, and perhaps a little romantic. Again, nothing is resolved as neatly as Hollywood's Law of Happy Endings would demand.
If there is a character in The Taste of Others who is not adequately developed, it is Castella's wife. She exists primarily for Castella to react against. And Castella's recently divorced sister is introduced in little more than a cameo performance in two scenes that are more awkward than they were apparently intended to be. But these are minor flaws, at most. The film's many satisfying elements more than compensate, and it is the pleasant memory of them that will linger.
A nice touch is that some of the movie's wit plays off the reputation French men enjoy for being accomplished, confident lovers. In one scene, the driver and bodyguard are comparing notes when the bodyguard declares that he has slept with 300 women. The driver uses the formula suggested by the bodyguard and determines he's had sex with 50 women. He seems pleased with that, although he asks the bodyguard, "Three hundred is a figure of speech, right?"
Later, the driver meets a woman who says they had sex together several years ago. He doesn't remember, until they have sex again. Later, she tells a friend, "He looks at me and says, 'How could I forget?' And I was thinking, 'Funny, how could I remember?' "
The French title of The Taste of Others, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture, is Le Gout des Outres. Apparently it has an idiomatic meaning that English does not capture. That's a bonus for anyone who understands French, but understanding the title is not required to appreciate the movie's charms. Call it Ishmael and it would still be worth watching.
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This review is part of the Bastille Day writeoff organized by pambo, whose ancestry is French.
Three men, three women, opposites, possibilities, and tastes. Castella owns a trucking company in Rouen; Bruno is his flute-playing driver, Franck is ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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