‘The Pot-Au-Feu’ Review: Tran Anh Hung Returns With An Awe-Inspiring Ode To Pleasure In All Its Forms [Cannes]

The Pot au Feu” has been acquired by Sapan Studios and IFC Films for domestic distribution. Produced by Olivier Delbosc and based upon Marcel Rouff’s novel “La Vie et la Passion de Dodin-Bouffant, gourmet,” the picture is set in late 19th-century France and concerns a relationship between an esteemed chef (Benoît Magimel) and his personal cook (Juliette Binoche), who is also his lover. The catch is Eugénie refuses to marry her employer and lover so, to win her over, the chef does something he has never done before and cooks for her. To film cuisine in an unprecedented fashion, the director called upon Pierre Gagnaire as Culinary Director to prepare the food prior to filming.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Sapan Studios and IFC Films have acquired U.S. rights to “The Pot-au-Feu,” Trần Anh Hùng’s (“The Scent of Green Papaya”) lush gastronomy-themed romance which competed at the Cannes Film Festival and won best director. The movie is headlined by two of France’s biggest stars, Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel, who won this year’s Cesar Award for “Pacifiction.” “The Pot-au-Feu” was produced by Olivier Delbosc at Curiosa Films and is represented in international markets by Gaumont.  The movie is one of the first titles co-acquired by Sapan Studios and IFC Films as part of their output deal. Sapan Studios is a new TV and film production/distribution company run by former AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Sylvester Stallone has crowned Arnold Schwarzenegger the “superior” action star, less than a year after openly admitting the two actors loathed each other throughout the 1980s as Hollywood pit their acting careers against one another. In Schwarzenegger’s recently released Netflix documentary “Arnold,” Stallone says there’s no question that Schwarzenegger was the more ideal action hero. “The ’80s was a very interesting time because the definitive ‘action guy’ had not really been formed yet,” Stallone said (via IndieWire). “Up until that time, action was a car chase like ‘Bullitt’ or ‘The French Connection.’ A film all about intellect and innuendo and verbal this and verbal that.”

Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger are celebrating four years of marriage together! Can you believe it??

The CW, which is under new ownership following Nexstar’s acquisition last year, is developing its own true-crime strand.

Often overlooked thanks to the ‘skip intro’ button, a great main title sequence serves as an entry point into another world. And this Emmy season has its share of series based on previous properties, which presents the main title designers with the challenge of linking existing inspirations with new stories. 

One of Netflix’s biggest original movies is The Old Guard, which landed on the streaming service in the middle of the pandemic in 2020.

William Earl Variety’s Actors on Actors series returns featuring the biggest stars in this year’s TV Emmys race for Season 18. The four episodes will debut on PBS SoCal on Thursday January 15th starting at 8:00 pm, followed by encores on KCET and public television stations across the country and the WORLD Channel (check local listings). All episodes will stream on pbssocal.org and the free PBS App following their premieres. Variety’s Actors on Actors issue will hit newsstands on June 7th and the conversations will start airing on Tuesday, June 6th on Variety.com and its social media channels. This year’s “Actors on Actors” lineup includes:

At least once, I can say the winners of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival competition are actually the right ones. Maybe not exactly in the order I would have put them, but still, out of the 21 movies competing, it is hard to argue about almost all of the choices made by the Ruben Ostlund-led jury that, among others, included Americans Brie Larson and Paul Dano. I said almost.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent “The Pot Au Feu” from French-Vietnamese director Trần Anh Hùng may be one of the most radical films competing for a Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes. The sensorial movie, set in late-19th century France, opens with a mouthwatering cooking sequence that runs nearly 40 minutes and portrays a slow-cooking romance with a minimalist plot. Yet, Hùng, best known for his Cannes’ Golden Camera-winning “The Scent of Green Papaya” and Venice Golden Lion-winning “Cyclo,” tells Variety he’s always been confident “The Pot Au Feu” would strike a chord beyond the foodie niche, and it has. The movie earned some of the competition’s strongest reviews on the heels of its world premiere and a U.S. deal is currently being negotiated by Gaumont. Variety‘s Guy Lodge praised the film for holding its audience “entirely on the pleasures of beauty, vicarious indulgence and, eventually, the human care inherent in haute cuisine.”

Cannes 2023 comes to a close, and much like yesterday, things have seemed a bit quiet. The movie on most everyone’s lips, at least if social media is any indicator, was Trần Anh Hùng’s period drama “The Pot au Feu,” a feature that, according to TheWrap’s Ben Croll in his review, “might very well be the most handsomely shot and soothingly felt serving of art house food porn ever brought to screen.

Nothing says French and Cannes more than amour, food and Juliette Binoche on the big screen. The Chocolat actress is back on the Croisette with the Tràn Anh Hùng’s movie, The Pot a Feu, and if you’re too much of a curmudgeon for the hanky panky and schmaltz in the movie, well then perhaps the filmmaker can win over your stomach with lush shots of cuisine.

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor The red carpet for Wednesday’s premiere of Tran Anh Hung’s “The Pot au Feu,” with Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel, was the scene of a demonstration in support of the land rights of the Indigenous peoples of Brazil.  The protest was led by the official delegation of “The Buriti Flower,” a film showing in the Un Certain Regard sidebar directed by Portugal’s João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora and sold by Films Boutique.  Appearing in front of the banks of photographers, the directors along with the actors wearing traditional dress, Francisco Hyjno Krahô, Debora Sodre, Luzia Cruwakwyj Krahô and Henrique Ihjac Krahô, unfurled a large banner with the slogan “Não ao Marco Temporal: The Future of Indigenous Lands in Brazil is Under Threat”. 

Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti made it clear why he was making fun of Netflix in his latest Cannes film entry, A Brighter Tomorrow.

Cordon bleu is the warmest color in Tràn Anh Hùng’s long but surprisingly light soufflé of a movie, a highly watchable Aga saga that’s so artful, charming and non-boat-rockingly old-school that it might make you wonder, even in a non-ironic way, what Lasse Hallström has been up to lately. In Cannes film festivals gone by, it could arguably have provoked the bidding war of the fortnight, given the track record of such foodie faves as Le Grand Bouffe, Babette’s Feast and Eat Drink Man Woman, which also debuted on the Croisette. But that’s faint praise for a story that, although it’s almost all about fillings, trimmings and toppings, doesn’t seem to have that much content or, more importantly, depth.

There were so many interesting looks on the red carpet at the premiere of La Passion De Dodin Bouffant during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival today!

 is the narrative space where a landed gent and the woman in his employ can exist as equals even for all the love (and occasional nights) they share. We are in France of the 1880s, remember.For all that, “The Pot au Feu” is no tale of forbidden or even unconsummated love, nor is it remotely melodramatic.

Guy Lodge Film Critic In the rose-gray light of dawn, Juliette Binoche strides through a verdant kitchen garden, wearing a straw hat as wide and undulating as an ocean wave. She plucks a majestically large, gnarled celeriac from the earth and sniffs it deeply and fondly, as if inhaling mythical ambrosia, and takes it back to the house. This is how Tràn Anh Hùng’s “The Pot au Feu” opens, which is to say on a note of sensory reverence and a hint of kitsch, in knowing thrall to one of the less pretty vegetables in nature’s cornucopia. There are people — this critic included — who will watch this scene and immediately sense with a hungry tingle that the film to come has been made expressly for their palate, and there is everyone else. “The Pot au Feu” is not for everyone else, and that’s just fine.

After her time in the country, Christina Hall is returning to California to finish off the fourth season of Christina on the Coast. HGTV announced that the docu-series is premiering 11 new episodes starting Thursday, June 29, at 9 p.m. and available to stream the same day and time on Max.

“Eureka” seems somewhat deceitfully simple: a man called Murphy (Viggo Mortensen) searches for his abducted daughter with the help of the mysterious El Coronel (Chiara Mastroianni), even if he has to shoot everyone who stands in his way.