The Big Picture

Wiseman’s latest documentary, Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros, is a masterwork that captures the intricacies of a Michelin 3-star restaurant in Central France. The film explores the legacy and potential changes that may come to the restaurant, focusing on Michel, the patriarch, and his sons who are leaving their mark on the culinary creations. With a reverential approach, Wiseman showcases the kitchen as an orchestra, highlighting the meticulous preparation and the artistry behind the meals, while also raising questions about the challenges of this craft.

While 2023 has seen some interesting documentaries that pack unexpected punches as they do everything from transcend true crime to show us what really causes shark attacks, nothing can compare to longtime director Frederick Wiseman’s latest masterwork, Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros. To put it in food terms, as that is what his 44th documentary itself is about, most everything else feels like it is merely an appetizer for what is the main course.

Precisely edited with a sharp eye for the varied rhythms of the kitchen and all the moving parts that give it life, it is a work of art about artists that reflects on the intricacies of collaboration to build to one of the director’s best conclusions. Even as there is much that leaves you hungering for more, what is served up is a vast portrait that is razor-focused on the little details. Once again, Wiseman has made one of the best documentaries of the year.

Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros Release Date December 20, 2023 Runtime 240 minutes Main Genre Documentary Genres Documentary

A subject the director discovered while trying to find somewhere to dine with his friends, the film immerses us in the Michelin 3-star restaurant La Maison Troisgros. Located in Central France, it is run by a family that has built their lives and careers around creating meticulously constructed meals. At the head of this is Michel, the patriarch of the family, who remains deeply involved in all aspects of the restaurant. He goes out to gather the ingredients, works with a team of chefs in the kitchen, and works the room, talking with the various people who come to eat there. Wiseman captures all of this, following every step of the journey of the food that makes it to your plate. At the same time, it ends up becoming a profile of this family and the changes that may soon be coming. Imagine the series The Bear was far more patient and truly made every second count to get an idea of what Wiseman achieves.

In many ways, Michel is as much the reason people come to Troisgros as the food they eat. He is passionate and knowledgeable though also, as we see in one humorous yet revealing scene, with specific tastes that may not account for certain approaches to cooking. Wiseman, while always taking time to explore every nook and cranny of his subjects, repeatedly brings him into focus in a way the patriarch may not entirely realize. Though we come to know plenty of other people in the kitchen, especially Michel’s sons Léo and César who increasingly leave their marks on their culinary creations, it is still mostly about a creator who may soon step aside. Just as it was passed down to him, the next generation may soon take it over. With his cinematographer James Bishop, Wiseman lets us sit with these moments as we realize that Michel may be saying farewell to the work he so clearly loves. While it couldn’t be more different than the director’s previous film City Hall, a sweeping look at the city of Boston and its former mayor Marty Walsh, there is the same shared attention to detail and the sense of a growing desire for change that will soon come to the forefront.

What is particularly interesting about this more reflective experience is how Wiseman brings us into these complicated questions via the reverential, almost romantic, way he shoots the kitchen itself. One doesn’t swallow up the other, as we see why it is that this is so important to the family for ourselves. It invites these deeper questions about commerce (never in a million years would most people be able to afford such a meal), legacy, and the future of fine dining. What they do is an art, but it also comes with specific challenges that any who works in it will have to contend with. Like any place of work, there are critical questions about the cost of doing business and what may end up being lost in the pursuit of their craft.

And yet, when everyone gets to moving in the kitchen, the magic takes hold of you. Every moment of preparation, from the precise way things are cooked to the way it is arranged on the plate, is like watching a painter or a composer at work. It is almost like a dance with everyone operating in sync with the stage of the kitchen itself, proving to be an intriguing design that invites us to look over everything. At the same time, Wiseman brings us in for close-up after close-up, which shows the craftspeople behind the food are just as important as the meals they are working on. Where other recent narrative films about fine dining have felt like chewing on half-baked meals, this documentary takes a bite out of the whole thing.

For all the ways a four-hour experience may seem daunting, every facet of the film is necessary to understand all of this world and the people that populate it. That is what a good documentary can and should do. It could have been even longer, as several of Wiseman’s films have been, and it still wouldn’t have felt like anything was unnecessary. Like the artisans that he is capturing here, you can feel the care in every frame. Even as it takes its time, it is never meandering. All the ingredients come together in such a way that, when we head out into our own detailed worlds, our stomachs may be grumbling, but our minds will be full.

Rating: 9/10

Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros is now playing in select theaters in the U.S. Click below for showtimes.

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