Juliette Binoche on Acting With Her Ex, Benoît Magimel: “I Was Very Moved”

In Trần Anh Hùng’s indelible, very edible French romance The Taste of Things, a culinary-obsessed couple demonstrate their love through food. “Do you see me more as a wife or a cook?” asks Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) to her partner, Dodin (Benoît Magimel). “A cook,” Dodin responds. With a smile, Eugénie says, “Thank you.”

Originally titled The Pot-au-feu when it premiered at Cannes, The Taste of Things is a mouth-watering proposition. The actors, coached by the famed chef Pierre Gagnaire, prepared the dishes for real, ingredient by ingredient, then often devoured them for the camera. So when faced with Binoche in the Londoner Hotel, I have only one way to start an interview: during the shoot, did she see herself as more an actor or a cook? “Aha!” Binoche responds. “I had to be a cook. If you think about acting, you cannot cook. The idea is to forget yourself; to be so into what you’re doing, that you become this cook.”

After all, Binoche is a versatile movie icon who’s collaborated with provocative auteurs such as Michael Haneke, David Cronenberg, Claire Denis, Chantal Akerman, Abbas Kiarostami, Leos Carax, and Jean-Luc Godard. Meanwhile, she’s also dabbled with mainstream crowdpleasers (Chocolat and Godzilla) and won an Oscar for The English Patient. The Taste of Things, though, fits both strands: an acclaimed arthouse drama that’s incredibly watchable and, in the UK, will be released in cinemas on Valentine’s Day.

At the heart of The Taste of Things is the astronomical – or gastronomical, even – love between Eugénie and Dodin, a pair who run a French restaurant in 1885. Unlike Chocolat, which suffocated Binoche’s chocolate-making scenes with quirky music, The Taste of Things has no score – apart from Eugénie’s cooking, that is. I ask Binoche if she considers her character to be a percussionist with vegetables. “It felt more like painting to me,” says the 59-year-old French actor. “Pierre, whose recipes we were doing, said that when he transforms matter into high-cooking, he gives the ingredients their tenderness. It’s not about exposing your ego on a plate; it’s about it transitioning into something special with heart and generosity.”

La Binoche, as she’s often called, demonstrated her painting skills in Let the Sunshine In, Words and Pictures, and Lovers on the Bridge. On The Taste of Things, did she consider the cooking utensils to be a paintbrush and the saucepan her canvas? “It had that feeling,” she says. “There were the colours the DP was putting together, also with candles and real light. The way we filmed, the camera was like a brush going through the different cooking scenes; a sense of painting with the camera. My hands had to be delicate when cutting fish or stirring the stew; I had to be smiling, and being into the beauty of it.”

We speak at length about Binoche’s own cooking habits, right down to her routine of purchasing fresh vegetables from a market every week. The ritual involves quizzing the farmers on their ingredients (“it depends on the care they give to their gardens”) and organising her family’s healthy meals in advance. As she’s on a press tour, are her children obeying instructions in her absence? “Yes! We’re a vegetables family. A meal without vegetables is not a meal. And by vegetables, I don’t mean potatoes, I mean green vegetables. Real vegetables.”

For much of The Taste of Things, there isn’t a plot per se. Dodin yearns for Eugénie, his professional and romantic partner for years, to marry him, but she’s hesitant; otherwise, they blissfully prepare lavish meals, trying to ignore Eugénie’s worsening health. An emerging storyline, though, is metatextual: two decades ago, Binoche and Magimel were in a long-term relationship and had a child but not a wedding. Binoche reveals that, during the shoot, Magimel went off-script and said he saw Eugénie as a wife, not a cook, when asked the crucial question. Hung, however, claimed to Binoche that Magimel said wife and a cook. Either way, Magimel had to be persuaded into performing the line as scripted.

As Binoche was attached to The Taste of Things first, was Magimel cast afterwards so that art would imitate life? “You’d have to ask Hung,” says Binoche. “What I know is that Benoît loves cooking and eating. The subject matter probably drew him in, but the fact that I was involved probably meant he said yes.” Binoche famously dated Leos Carax and broke up with him while making The Lovers on the Bridge; towards the end of the shoot, she almost drowned when Carax ordered her to dive into the Seine. I suggest that The Taste of Things, too, plays differently with knowledge of the real actors’ relationships.

“It brings another dimension when you know the background,” says Binoche. “But there’s a lot of background in films, usually, that people just don’t know about. I was very moved to work with Benoît. The fact that I was in front of him, and being able to express feelings that I’d kept in my heart and was not able to express – it’s about making peace inside you. Even though the past had been difficult, it’s wonderful to express that it’s OK. Love is stronger than us, anyway. We have to surrender to that need of peace. It’s allowing to accept that it’s not perfect, and that’s what it is. There’s a modesty that you have to have in front of love because we have to accept that we’re not …” Binoche pauses. I think she’s about to cry, but instead, she laughs. “We have flaws, and we’re not perfect. In life, perfection is to be found differently.”

Binoche claims she hasn’t auditioned in around 15 years (“it was a play – don’t ask me the name”) but, when she did, she wouldn’t fret over missed roles. Her example is Sydney Pollak’s remake of Sabrina; Binoche made it to the final two, losing to Julia Ormond. “I saw the film – I think on a plane.” I ask about rumours that Carax has shot an autobiographical feature titled It’s Not Me that revisits his filmography. Will Binoche play herself in it? “All I know is that he has a new project with Adam Driver.” Wasn’t that Annette? “No, a new film.” So she doesn’t know who will play her in It’s Not Me? “No.” When I suggest it might be Julia Ormond, my joke doesn’t get much of a response.

I tell Binoche that Eugénie’s internalised emotions remind me of Three Colours: Blue. Binoche mulls it over, then reveals that, on Blue, she based her performance on a friend who, like the character, lost a husband and child. “Krzysztof Kieślowski asked me to never cry. I asked him to let me cry for the last shot when hope comes back, when they make love. On this one, the emotions came differently. I had it in front of me with Benoît. I could not have imagined in my life that one day we would work together, and I’d be able to express to him my heart through someone else’s words. Being in front of him, after all we went through, was a gift.”

With time up, there’s only one way to end this food-themed interview: what’s the best meal Binoche has ever prepared? After a long pause, she responds, “I tried something new, and my guests were very impressed: salmon with spinach and bechamel, crusted with paste. It looked so grand.” No, wait, there’s actually another way the interview has to end. Does Binoche see me more as a journalist or a cook? “Are you a good cook?” she says. “No,” I respond. “Then I see you as a journalist!” she says. Like Eugénie, I utter two simple words: “Thank you.”

The Taste of Things is out in UK cinemas on February 14.