Cuisine et dépendances (1993) - film review

Jacques and Martine are delighted when a former friend – whom they have not seen for ten years and who has since become a television celebrity – accepts their invitation to dinner.  The couple do everything they can to make the evening a success, but things soon get out of control.  Their guest’s wife, Charlotte, turns out to be an old flame of their unwelcome lodger, Georges.  The latter’s ill-tempered mood poisons the atmosphere, but it is Martine’s brother, Fred, who ultimately ruins the party.  Having failed to get Jacques and then Georges to bail him out of his gambling debts, Fred persuades Jacques and Martine’s guest of honour to join him in a friendly game of poker...

After the success of their stage play, Cuisine et dépendances, Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui co-scripted this film adaptation, directed by Philippe Muyl.  The film features the same cast as the play and marks the first in a series of impressive film collaborations between Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui.  Their subsequents hits include Un air de famille (1996), On connaît la chanson (1997) and Le Goût des autres (2000) – all popular films which portray male-female relationships with insight, sensitivity and a certain amount of wry humour.

The quality of the writing and acting in Cuisine et dépendances is such that you scarcely notice that virtually all of the drama takes places in one room – the kitchen.  Occasionally, the film cuts away to an adjoining room to offer us an introspective glimpse of one of the characters as he or she reflects on his predicament.  We see nothing of the dinner party itself, and indeed two of the characters – the unnamed TV star and Fred’s girlfriend Marilyn – are not revealed to us.  The kitchen is the place where the film’s characters come and vent their pent-up fustrations, the neutral territory where they can reveal their true personas without feeling the need to put on act – in fact, the total opposite to how they would behave around the dinner table.  What the film offers is an appetising slice of life which is moving, amusing, and uncompromisingly truthful.

© James Travers 2004

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