Menus-Plaisirs (Wiseman) review

Menus-Plaisirs : Les Troisgros (2023) Frederick WISEMAN

What you ought to know prior to watching this film

The less information about this film, the more surprises the slow-burn discovery will get you, each step of the way. The faces of these chefs might not be familiar at first, but they’ll gradually grow on you… until you’re part of the family by the end.
You might want to save a good moment of your time to complete this four-hour long observational documentary, as there is no built-in intermission. Like for all Wiseman’s recent films, this film spends longer than usual to foster acquaintance with the universe he’s studying. He observes carefully, patiently, the institutions of society and culture, one at the time, with a no-nonsense title naming its subject with exactitude.

What you won’t see in this film: emotional music score, voiceover commentary, stars, competition, prices, money, waiting line, shouting orders, gratuitous insults, tears of despair or joy, food reviews, Instagram food porn, ratings, recipes… Without the drama, excess, and surplus of Cooking TV shows, a contemplative documentary is better enjoyed raw, bare-boned.

At the intersection of Raymond Depardon’s Profil Paysan (2003-09) and Gereon Wetzel’s El Bulli: Cooking in Progress (2010), Menus-Plaisirs is a documentary that combines the state of the art in farming with the experiments of developing a very very refined cuisine.

Opening Sequence

A few static shots of the train station in the city center of Roanne, before we follow with a handheld camera two chefs grocery shopping at the local farmers’s market. More static close ups of vegetables, turnips, onions, salad, mint and other unknown plants… while we, the spectators, overhear the discussion with the merchants. César and Léo only take what is necessary, in large quantities, inquire about seasonal produce, discover new names from these noble or ancient vegetables.

However awarded these chefs are, it is a pleasant surprise to first meet them as themselves, normal persons, interacting with long-time friends at the market. They are eager to find the best products and aren’t reluctant to ask for advice, to mismatch produce and their name, to learn from the people who grow these vegetables with love and care.

Les Troisgros, a masculine gastronomic dynasty

Even if Marie, the grandmother, was first in the kitchen of the Troisgros family restaurant in Roanne (at the very center of France), only male descendants took over ever since. Their flagship restaurant has held three Michelin stars for 55 years in a row now. Pierre Troisgros, the grand-father and son of Marie, opened in 1957 L'Hôtel Moderne. Now, Michel Troisgros, his son, moved the hotel-restaurant in 2017 from Roanne to Ouches (a few kilometers away), Le Bois sans feuilles. This is where his son, César Troisgros, fourth generation of chefs in the family tree will take over in 2022 (after the shooting of this film). The familial empire owns a couple more restaurants in the region: La Colline du Colombier, directed by chef Léo, César's brother, and Le Central in Roanne, as well as a food truck. Two lonely women operate on the sidelines. Michel’s wife is in charge of the decorum, and his daughter is the receptionist of the hotel.

Frederick Wiseman

At 93 years old, this master of Observational Cinema directs his 50th documentary since 1967 at the pace of nearly one per year. His documentaries require a long immersion on site for the shooting and last over two or three hours each after final cut. Frederick Wiseman is a cinema institution himself. There is an ironic parallel between his own 55 years-long career and the lasting three Michelin stars streak (for 55 years too since 1967). Both of them, the filmmaker and the chef, are cultural monuments in their own right.
Since Titicut Follies (1967), his debut film, Wiseman is a monomaniac documentarian, picking only one subject at the time, or more precisely one place: an official institution, a public office, a civic service, a trade or an establishment of culture… Always a systematic exploration of the inner workings of an institution and its employees, the small hands at work and their voices at every level of responsibilities. All this in a larger context of other viewpoints garnered in an accumulative collection of sights, sounds and gestures.

Frederick Wiseman elects another French institution (after L'Opéra de Paris, La Comédie Française, The Crazy Horse), this time will be the Troisgros family restaurants, which he films patiently from service to service, from the morning vegetable market to the cheese cave, from the maid to the receptionist, from the server to the chef...

Contemplative Documentary

His surveillance camera is like a fly on the wall, eavesdropping on the mundane conversations around him, revealing every time a new aspect of the whole system. Wiseman abstains from interacting with his subjects, never shares his opinion in a sententious voiceover commentary, and avoids the camera address of people on screen breaking the fourth wall. Thus his camera is impersonal, almost invisible, and captures unexpected moments, candid reactions, true feelings. One after the other, a chef, a farmer, a maid, a cook, a maître D, a sommelier, a waitress, a client, a cheese maker… shine on screen and unveil another aspect of the intricate ecosystem of a fine dining restaurant.
His cold surveillance device allows him to present an authentic material, as objective as can be, putting the audience in the driver’s seat, taking sides, changing their mind, building themselves their own argument based on observation alone. The spectator is active and responsibilized.

Wiseman alternates between rapid “pillow shots” à la Yasujiro Ozu, and long static takes of continuous moments. Pillow shots are close up of objects or landscapes emptied of their population, marking a pause and focusing on a view as if the camera was daydreaming, its attention drifting away for an instant, gazing at a fixed point on the scenery. These belong to the Japanese concept of “Ma” or “space in between”, highlighting the intervals, duration, negative space or distance. The long takes film either a station in the kitchen where a prolonged gesture is carefully executed or a conversation of chef Michel to his customers, working the room, retelling such or such a story about a dish, the history of the restaurant, his family…

Haute cuisine: all around excellence and mastery

This mesmerizing ballet of experts sways to the rhythm of the chef’s soft command. Each and everyone a master at their place waiting for an order, programmed to perform excellence, trained to repeat it to the smallest detail. Perfection and consistency.
Not only in the kitchen, the producers also are in the spotlight, through field trips of the team directly into the best farms, where veals graze, where huge tomatoes grow, where goat milk is drawn, where cheese is matured, where the vineyards are taken care of… Even in their own backyard (the restaurant sits in the middle of nowhere in the countryside), where they grow their own vegetable garden, or harvest elderberry flowers next to their lake. Everyone involved is a master of its craft and talks about it with expertise.

Penetrating the privileged bubble

The waiting list is seemingly endless, because it is extremely difficult to get a table in a three Michelin stars restaurant, one of the very best in the entire world. But there are recurrent clients, from a privileged caste of familiars that the staff knows by face and by name. These are the very fortunate and opulent chosen few. They land in the backyard onboard a helicopter, they stay overnight at the adjoining hotel. Others come in for a wedding anniversary or a familial celebration, once in a lifetime. But everyone is served as royalty.
Wiseman chanced an invitation to film the restaurant as he was dining with friends, and there he was, spending days in and days out in this secret palace, with privy access to the everyplace of this luxurious temple of French cuisine.

Wiseman hereby offers a love letter to Troisgros, if not the best commercial advertisement possible… It is more an elegy to the Art rather than a criticism of the institution. Nonetheless, a few scenes, too few, attempt to equalize the balance with some social class outlook. One such scene depicts a standup meeting of the front of house staff where the topic of bullying and harassment is evoked in the shape of an anonymous “suggestion box” to report name calling, offensive nicknames… Another time, the film cuts away to a maid doing the vacuum cleaner in the adjacent room while we continue to overhear the conversation of the three chefs.

It is an honor and it is a curse to penetrate this privileged bubble, only the richest of this world can afford to frequent, where the priceless meal is paired with a 15,000 € bottle of wine.

Food for your eyes only

The film begins at the vegetable market, where the best products are awaiting, and continues on with a summit amongst the three officiating chefs sitting at a roundtable: the three Michelin stars’s Michel and his two succeeding heirs, César and Léo, each leading the brigade in the kitchen of a different family restaurant. This somehow informal meeting in the empty room of the hôtel-restaurant Le Central, is where the design of the menus takes form, from their speech only. We hear about seasonal ingredients and scarcity, about matching wine with meat, about masking bitterness with sweetness, about switching a fish for another… Just like this film review presents a visual film with written words, the film shows us the world of cuisine without taste buds, without the sense of smell or taste, a sterile environment with unfulfilled desires, pleasure without climax. A curse for the stomach who is promised so many untouchable wonders.
Next is the front of house meeting, always standing up, where the menu orders of the day are reviewed, in terms of food intolerance and preferences, items switcheroo, or just the number of seats at the table. Then it’s the cooks meeting, standing up always, discussing the products arrival in the right quantities, adjusting last minute changes. Finally the servers who describe the menu for the clients sitting at the table. Again and again, the words alone incarnate the food.

It is only when the service starts, that we see the food being modeled and plated at the pass before being devoured by the eyes of the customers when they are served (some even take pictures of the sumptuous dishes). However, we’ll never get to taste and share this unique gustatory experience in this filmic representation.