Early on in The Taste of Things, a renowned chef asks a young culinary prodigy to taste a consommé and note how the flavor has changed. The prodigy concludes that it’s become less strong, and the chef agrees. “What you lose in taste you gain in color,” he says, explaining that the clarification process has alchemized the broth into something smoother, subtler, gentler, more delicate and pure. It’s a fitting analogy for the film itself, which forgoes embellishments and is all the more powerful for it. Director Trần Anh Hùng allows long, uninterrupted cooking sequences to speak for themselves: Instead of relying on music to evoke emotion, he scores the movie with a symphony of sounds: the clink of cutlery against china, the sizzle of short ribs in a pan, and the crackle of a hearth, all set against a near-constant backdrop of birdsong and buzzing bees. Read the full review on The Stranger.