“Menus – delights. Les Troisgros”: Frederic Wiseman’s star-studded holiday

The meaning of “the world” – should not be missed

Even a brief overview of the works of 93-year-old Frederick Wiseman is enough to make you dizzy. In a fifty-six-year career and a good forty films, Excuse Me, the former Boston attorney turned filmmaker in the 1960s documented the major intersections and anterooms of American public life, from mental hospitals (Titicut nonsense1967) in the City Hall (The city hall2020), passes secondary school (Secondary school I1968 and II1994), social services (Prosperity1975; Family Violence2002), NATO base (Maneuver1979) or the library (former libris2017).

The Paris-based filmmaker opened, within this monumental filmography, a French branch, where he devoted several films to France as a hidden defector, with his characteristic smooth and concise eye. Here again the maker of the documentary looks at the institutions, this time cultural, Comédie-Française or played love (1996), dance. Paris Opera Ballet (2009), Crazy horse (2011), which has now been added, with Pleasure menusMaison Troisgros, in Rouen (Loire), a large restaurant with three Michelin stars.

A question immediately arises. What reality can we grasp of France in the splendor of such jewels, in this case the mecca of gastronomy, classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site? Wiseman is interested in precisely the way in which these places invite their own staging: the kitchen is no exception, as a specific form of representation that the country gives to itself as well as to others. The filmmaker approaches it with the method known to us, fabricated for a long time: “around the owner” without any comment, except for a suggestive montage and a long time of observation – the clock here reaches a hundred and forty. minutes.

Empire of concentration

Thus, Maison Troisgros, a family business spanning several generations, will be available in all its components. The father, Michel, has entrusted the keys to the star-studded flagship Le Bois sans Feuilles, where he always helps his eldest son, César, while the youngest, Leo, runs the two adjoining tables, La Colline. du Colombier and in the center of Roanne, Le Central. The mother, Marie-Pierre, oversees the hotel side and as an interior designer the “decor” line of various establishments.

Every institution, first of all, a “machine”, Wiseman looks at its functioning, its operation. To do this, he follows the trail of products collected from the first stage by the chefs themselves in the Roan market, then from various small local producers (breeder, winemaker, processor, etc.) to be transported to the kitchen. He took the brigade, worked, transformed and finally assembled at this stage of the process, which is the plate. Rather, it is a range of practices surrounding the kitchen, descending in sequence, capillary, from table service to sommelier, through the various layers of interaction with customers.