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In 'The Taste of Things,' all those delicious on-screen meals are real Food stylists will sometimes swap glue for milk and coat meat with motor oil. But on the set of The Taste of Things, the meals were real — and the actors kept eating after the director yelled "Cut!"

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< The 'food' you see on-screen often isn't real food. Not so, in 'The Taste of Things'

The 'food' you see on-screen often isn't real food. Not so, in 'The Taste of Things'

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JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

In the new French movie "The Taste Of Things," Juliette Binoche plays a longtime personal cook to a man who's a gourmand. They love each other, but she refuses to marry him. Their shared love of food, however, is undeniable. Critics have raved about the look of the film. As NPR's Elizabeth Blair reports, no food stylists were used to dress up the dishes.

ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: Food stylists are hired by advertisers and TV shows to make whatever is on screen look delicious enough to eat but also functional enough to film. They've been known to substitute glue for milk, shaving foam for whipped cream or coat meat with motor oil so it glistens.

TRAN ANH HUNG: I didn't want to have a food stylist on the movie because I wanted everything to be real.

BLAIR: Tran Anh Hung directed "The Taste Of Things."

HUNG: From the beginning, I chose not to go with beauty shots. I prefer 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, you know, a picture. It's beautiful like something that is real.

BLAIR: And that meant filming real food - a lot of it...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE TASTE OF THINGS")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, speaking French).

BLAIR: ...Because real ingredients can't always handle multiple takes. And Tran Anh Hung wanted to show dishes at different stages of preparation, like braised lettuce and the classic French stew pot-au-feu.

HUNG: For instance, for the pot-au-feu, we needed 40 kilos of meat for the shooting.

BLAIR: That's almost 90 pounds of meat. They had to find vegetables that looked like they were harvested in the 19th century.

HUNG: They are not as beautiful as today. They are not straight, you know, and they have a lot of spots on the skin. Things like that we had, you know, to buy a lot.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE TASTE OF THINGS")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, speaking French).

BLAIR: One of the most stunning creations in "The Taste Of Things" is a seafood vol-au-vent, a large, round pastry shell filled with crayfish and vegetables in thick sauce. When it's served, the guests are awestruck...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE TASTE OF THINGS")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Ooh.

BLAIR: ...And do something that feels very French - discuss the man who invented the dish.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE TASTE OF THINGS")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character, non-English language spoken).

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As character, non-English language spoken).

BLAIR: The image of the vol-au-vent being cut is absolute beauty, says three-star chef Pierre Gagnaire, who consulted on the film.

PIERRE GAGNAIRE: (Speaking French).

BLAIR: "Crazy sensuality," he adds. Tran Anh Hung says the crew took home doggie bags for dinner. And the actors...

HUNG: When I say cut, they always keep on eating. And they ate so much that at the end of the movie, some scenes - we needed to shoot it unbuttoned because there was no more room for the costume to enlarge them. So we - you know, we had to shoot it unbuttoned.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE TASTE OF THINGS")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #5: (As character, speaking French).

BLAIR: Tran Anh Hung did extensive research into the history of French cuisine and worked with a historian to come up with a menu. He enlisted Gagnaire to make sure that the menu worked in real life.

HUNG: He found that some recipe are not good, some dish. So he change it for me. And then at the end, we had a new menu, and he cooked for me for five days in his kitchen so I can see how all this works.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPATULA SCRAPING)

GAGNAIRE: For me to get this movie, it's an homage to my technique and to my creativity.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE TASTE OF THINGS")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #6: (As character, non-English language spoken).

BLAIR: "The Taste Of Things" does not have much dialogue. The action and the intimacy is in the kitchen. Binoche's character is quiet and focused. She's less interested in romance than she is in a creative culinary partnership. Gagnaire says he relates. When he started working in kitchens as a teenager, he didn't like it. He was shy and reserved. When he realized he had a special talent for the profession, it became his way to socialize.

GAGNAIRE: (Non-English language spoken).

BLAIR: "By feeding people and making them happy," he says, "cooking helped me connect with society and develop real relationships." "The Taste Of Things" is the opposite of a big superhero action movie. Gagnaire believes people need that right now.

GAGNAIRE: (Non-English language spoken).

BLAIR: "We are bombarded with vulgarity and brutality. When you leave this film, you feel calm," he says, "because instead of violence, there's tenderness."

HUNG: In life, we have two sources of sensuality - is love and food.

BLAIR: "The Taste Of Things" brings those two sources together, but the steam is in the kitchen. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF ANDREW VAN OEYEN PERFORMANCE OF MASSENET'S "MEDITATION")

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