As far as French history goes, one never tires of the approaches that can be taken in exploring the French Revolution. A phenomenon not really seen since in terms of the poor deciding to “eat the rich.” Or at least overthrow them. Thus, the importance of cinema continuing to reiterate how glorious that brief blip in history was in terms of “the 99%” triumphing by showing the “1%” just how irrelevant their so-called power can actually be once they’ve, in fact, overstepped their boundaries. You know, with regard to pushing broke asses to their brink.
Enter Éric Besnard’s Délicieux, a movie set in 1789 and named as such not just because it’s in the “cooking genre,” but because that’s what the chef for le duc de Chamfort (Benjamin Lavernhe), Pierre Manceron (Grégory Gadebois), decides to name his specialty (les délicieux). One that the duke specifically tells him not to make via the instruction to avoid getting too creative. For being at the mercy of an affluent’s “better taste” is just one of the many disadvantages of being another faceless member of le peuple—even if said member is part of that rare breed of “riffraff” that can live somewhat “like a king” by virtue of working onsite 24/7 at a nobleman’s palatial abode. Indeed, the opening title cards to Délicieux remind that eating well was just as much a privilege of the rich as everything else. So yeah, pretty much just like now. Except that the commoner couldn’t at least tell themselves their middling stature wasn’t all that middling now and again by “splurging” a.k.a. treating themselves to a meal out. And that’s the story Délicieux seeks to tell: how the origins of “the restaurant” have undeniable roots in class warfare.
So naturally, the French Revolution was the perfect moment for it to develop as a concept through Manceron, who, after defying the duke, decides to, in fact, “get creative.” As he stands before the duke and his fellow rich bitch friends just before getting fired, the priest on hand at the table for good measure hypocritically remarks, “Gluttony is a cardinal sin. We must fight the current fashion for over-eating and excess appetite”—while obviously engaging in this very behavior.
The others at the table briefly praise Manceron overall, but that goddamn priest taints the mood by critiquing the one thing—les délicieux—he tried to get creative with. What’s more, when certain ingredients come to light, suddenly everybody is outraged by the “peasant” qualities of the cuisine. The priest, who prattled on about the cardinal sin of waste and gluttony, tosses the plate down and declares, “Truffle and potato is only fit for pigs!” Which is fortunate for rich people, as that’s what they are: motherfucking cochons.
Mercifully, Manceron is somewhat “middle class” enough (meaning he has a backup option) to refuse to apologize in any way for his cuisine when the duke asks him to, instead opting to retreat with his son, Benjamin (Lorenzo Lefèbvre), to the property that belonged to his father. Soured on the whole “chef’s life,” Manceron seems to prefer contenting himself with the profession of innkeeper as the passersby on their way to somewhere else appear to have no shortage of advice on how he should run his business. At one point, a man passing through to repose on his route from Paris gives Benjamin news of “il peuple”: “They shout in the streets, rob the churches, but head home once the guard is sent in. The people like to obey. And beg for the odd beating to remember it. A docile beast, nothing will come of it.” Oh, how little this twit knew.
It’s around this time, too, that a mysterious woman named Louise (Isabelle Carré) materializes, begging Manceron to let her be his apprentice—despite his not so gentle reminder that she’s hardly “an apprentice’s age.” Furthermore, Manceron makes the claim, “Cuisine is a man’s affair. Women don’t understand it.” This being rather antithetical to the very role (“live-in cook”) women would be relegated to in subsequent centuries.
But money does talk, and Louise has enough to persuade Manceron to take her on. Even if it requires some additional enraged “coaxing” to get him to teach her something valuable about the art of cooking. A hint of a Phantom Thread moment then develops when Manceron takes her into the forest and tells her not to come back until she’s foraged some ingredients to cook with. Back at the property, Manceron sifts through her “product,” informing Louise that one of her fungi findings, amanita, can kill someone in three days. “Maybe it was for me,” he adds before also inserting his lesson for the day: “If you can’t recognize good produce, you’ll never be a good cook.” This little tidbit about the mushroom comes back later in a Never Been Kissed-esque turn of events (Billy Prince, the prom) when the duke, having promised—nay, demanded—to come and eat at the inn after Manceron, Louise and Benjamin spent many days preparing to roll out the proverbial red carpet, decides to ride his carriage right past the whimsically-decorated tableau while he and his cohorts cackle mockingly.
But then, Manceron had already warned Louise that, “This world is ugly because we [read: class distinctions] make it so. False, coarse.” But, at the very least, “The same goes for cooking. Cooks must train their taste as musicians do their ear.” Yes, such lines put Délicieux right up there with Mostly Martha and maybe even Chocolat (maybe). Except that, unlike any other films in the cooking genre (that aren’t in the vein of a documentary like Super Size Me), Délicieux dares to address how much the rich take even the simple quotidian joy of eating away from the average person. For even eating “well” is the “divine right” of the wealthy. Which is why the Duke is able to say, with a straight face, “True cuisine is not for ordinary mortals.”
Though, in vague fairness to the duke, he might be right (where Americans are concerned) based on the slop that most people are content to eat. But they’re only “content” to eat it because such food is all that’s affordable. Which somehow makes richies like the duke genuinely believe themselves when they say, “Good food is not for the rabble. One must deserve it.” Yet what makes rich ilk deserve it more? The sheer “virtue” of having been birthed through a well-to-do vagina? Pish posh. In any event, not only is gruel all that’s affordable for the masses, it also makes people addicted to it with its preservatives, high-fructose corn syrup and other assorted mutated ingredients. This addiction, in turn, leads to overweightness, which, in turn, leads to greater complacency. The number one quality the rich want out of their “servants.”
For the romantics (a.k.a. the French), Délicieux isn’t all class war and food porn—there’s also, quelle surprise, a love story blossoming between Manceron and Louise. Even if an extremely fraught one that commences with Manceron’s unwanted advance as he “instructs” her. “So you are all the same,” she says when he tries to kiss her while her eyes are closed during his taste test experiment. But all Louise tastes in the aftermath of Manceron’s emboldened approach is the bitter goût of disappointment.
To make matters more difficult for Manceron’s personal life, Benjamin continues to express open disdain for his father’s obsession with returning into the underserving clutches of the duke. “We were free and you prefer to be a lackey,” Benjamin tells him after blaming Jacob’s (Christian Bouillette) death on Manceron’s mad dash to put on a banquet to impress the duke (after all, those fancy barrels of wine that toppled onto Jacob wouldn’t have been brought in otherwise).
More suffering and intrigue mount as Louise gives him an all too brief sampling of success through being his own boss, creating whatever dishes strike his fancy on the day that customers arrive to look at the menu. But, without Louise, who Manceron discovers is actually a vengeance-seeking noble (Marquise de la Varenne), he fears he’s lost all zest for the kitchen.
Maybe that’s why he permits Hyancinthe (Guillaume de Tonquédec), the duke’s steward, to say to him, “What keeps the world turning is knowing one’s place. Otherwise it’d be chaos. Believe me, it is men like us who ensure the order of things.” Spoken like a germinal Republican. Alas, much to the chagrin of men like the duke, there does come a breaking point, sooner or later, for the “bottom rung” of society—made that way because of those who have built wealth on their backs (*cough* *cough* Jeff Bezos).
And so, when Manceron is finally given a choice between helping Louise’s cause in taking down the duke for her own personal reasons and remaining blindly loyal to his erstwhile employer, he chooses to break with convention in favor of the former. Just as all the proletariats of the French Revolution did when they cried out, “Down with privilege!” Incidentally, what a customer screams at the duke when he does show up to the inn upon being lured there under false pretenses.
“I feel sweet things are better served at the end,” Louise declares as she, like, invents the meal timing of dessert. And the sweetest thing of all about Délicieux’s denouement is that it reminds le peuple not only what they’re capable of, but that class structure on this planet is so disgustingly ingrained into everything that it seeps right down to the simplest measure of existence: food.
