Film: A Matter of Taste

This psychological thriller about a young waiter's (Jean-Pierre Lorit) tragic life trajectory after accepting a job as a full-time personal taster for a powerful and obsessive business tycoon named Frederic Delamont (Bernard Giraudeau) is definitely French--A Matter of Taste's basic concern with food, sex, class and psychology makes its national origins evident. While fun for francophiles, this film is not fundamentally fabulous. The enormous amount of screen time dedicated to the ritual of the meal and the preparation, tasting and discussion of each feast's gourmet delicacies is overwhelming, especially to the hungry viewer. Also, the "tasting" of women and portrayal of female characters in a subordinate role besmirches the picture as seen from a female perspective. But these "excesses" in the film do help characterize the extravagance of Delamont's lifestyle and the greed that plagues him. His selfishness, which leads to his tremendous wealth and dictates his everyday actions, eventually provokes his own murder by decapitation, insinuating the fatal flaw of the modern bourgeois. So there's an underlying social message, but the food metaphor the film uses to relay it is less than satisfying.