In 'The Taste of Things,' all those delicious on-screen meals are real

Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) and Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel) love food (and one another) in The Taste of Things. Director Tran Anh Hung aimed for authenticity — from the menu to the movements in the kitchen — and enlisted three-star chef Pierre Gagnaire to help. Stéphanie Branchu/IFC Films hide caption

Plenty of critics have warned: don't see the new French movie The Taste of Things on an empty stomach. Juliette Binoche plays a longtime personal cook to a man who's a gourmand. They share a passion for food – and for each other — but she refuses to marry him. Filled with gorgeous meals, the film celebrates food, and all the work and love that goes into making it.

When you see a delicious meal in a movie or an ad, chances are, it's inedible. Food stylists have been known to substitute glue for milk, shaving foam for whipped cream, and coating meat with motor oil so it glistens.

Chef Pierre Gagnaire, who consulted on The Taste of Things, says the food images in the film are both "authentic" and "elegant." IFC Films hide caption

All that was a big 'Non' for Vietnamese French director Tran Anh Hung.

He says he wanted "everything" in The Taste of Things "to be real," from the raw ingredients to the menu to the way the cooks move in the kitchen.

Rather than go for "beauty shots," Tran says he prefers "to see men and women at work doing their craft in the kitchen. And when this feeling is right, then everything will look beautiful. Not beautiful like a picture. It's beautiful like something that is real."

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A 19th century taste test. Carole Bethuel/IFC Films hide caption

A 19th century taste test.

Easier said than done. Real food can't always handle multiple takes. Plus Tran needed to show dishes at different stages of preparation. So he needed a lot of everything. For the classic French stew pot-au-feu "we needed 40 kilos of meat for the shooting."

That's almost 90 pounds.

He also had to find vegetables that looked like they were harvested in the 19th century. "They are not as beautiful as today," he says, "They are not straight, you know, and they have a lot of spots on the skin."

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"In life we have two sources of sensuality. It's love and food," says Tran. Carole Bethuel/IFC Films hide caption

"In life we have two sources of sensuality. It's love and food," says Tran.

One of the must stunning creations in The Taste of Things is a seafood vol-au-vent, a large pastry shell filled with a thick sauce of crayfish and vegetables. The image of it being sliced for the guests is "absolute beauty" and "crazy sensuality," says three-star chef Pierre Gagnaire who consulted on the film.

After doing extensive research into the the history of French cuisine and working with a historian, Tran enlisted Gagnaire to make sure the menu he'd come up with worked in real life.

"He found that some recipes are not good. So he changed it for me," Tran remembers.