It’s safe to say that the overarching interest of the 93-year-old master documentarian Frederick Wiseman is how people work. He plants his camera in a work environment and just records people fulfilling their tasks. In many cases, the environment is publicly operated and open—a city hall, a court, a library—but occasionally he inserts himself into a private enterprise whose history and culture is circumscribed. His latest epic focuses on La Maison Troisgros, a 3-star restaurant, located in the countryside of Roanne, France, that has been run by the same family for three generations. In fact, the provenance of the establishment may go back further, but Wiseman is somewhat stingy with the particulars of its biography, saving them for the very end of his four-hour film, at which point the viewer may have gotten past any desire for background, having been so totally submerged in the business’s rarefied ethic. It’s an odd way of structuring a portrait of what amounts to an idiosyncratic operation based on artistic and culinary whim rather than on economic prerogatives. 

And that’s not the only aspect of the production that distinguishes it from previous Wiseman works. Because the place where the hotel-restaurant complex is located is so gorgeous, Wiseman luxuriates in connecting shots of quite stunning beauty, thus making the overall film as aesthetically purposeful as the elaborate dishes whose preparation he so lovingly chronicles. I would estimate that a good half to two-thirds of the running time is devoted either to discussions of how meals should be constructed, or the actual construction itself. Because of the high prices the customers pay at the restaurant, the owner-chef, Michel Troisgros, feels it is beholden on him to open the process of the food preparation up to his patrons, and so there are long scenes of him standing at tables in front of rapt epicures explaining how this dish came about, along with a spicy anecdote that explains something of its centrality in his own life. When he and his heir, César, sit down and go over how to improve a certain dish, Wiseman doesn’t give us the gist of their discussion, he gives us the whole thing, including those bits about “reductions” and “umami” that the layman will not comprehend without additional voiceover, which, of course, Wiseman never indulges in. Being the true democratic completist he is, Wiseman doesn’t ignore the rest of the crew—the sous chefs, the wait staff, the accountants, the housekeepers, the suppliers (almost all ingredients are locally produced), the dishwashers. Everyone gets their due, as well as the opportunity to prove once again that there is no such thing as an insignificant job, especially in a restaurant.

The issue some may take is that the fareon offer is out of their league financially and otherwise, and there is something occasionally off-putting about the satisfied expressions on the faces of the privileged who can afford to dine at La Maison Troisgros. Personally, I am enormously happy whenever someone endeavors to feed me, whatever it is and however it is compensated for, and thus could never be a food critic because I could never criticize food, so while the dishes will likely send some viewers into fits of rapture, others may simply wonder what the big deal is. But I do like The Bear, and Wiseman’s presentation of the mechanics of a big kitchen has the same appeal, only without the high drama. These people seem to get along unusually well, even when they mess something up big time.

In French and English. Opens Aug. 23 in Tokyo at Bunkamura Le Cinema Shibuya Miyashita (050-6875-5280), Cine Switch Ginza (03-3561-0707).

Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 3 Star LLC