Menus Plaisirs - Les Troisgros (2023, Wiseman)

A bunt from Wiseman, which is any other filmmaker’s homer so I still come away fairly satisfied. When it’s focused on the goings-on of the Troisgrois restaurant in Ouches, France, it’s got that same Frederick Wiseman magic I’ve come to love: deep dives into the processes, economics, and personalities that make a place like this run. I was hypnotized by the cooking, of course, but found myself most enthused when Papa Chef Michel–the owner and North Star of the Troisgrois–comes in to critique his sons’ work. He’s got a sly, almost passive aggressive way of communicating; it’s fascinating to see when he gets his way, when he doesn’t, and how it ripples across the restaurant. There is, too, that classic Wiseman wit: the kind of jokes he’ll subtly plant in hour one that pay off in hour three. Serving asparagus with an almond puree, for example, that Michel advises in an early scene not to use. 

Yet, in spite of the fact that he’s lived in France for many years and made several films about it, Wiseman takes touristy detours here that are quite unlike the experiential institutional evaluations on which he’s historically embarked. I have an anecdote, to wit: 

At a Q&A mostly focused on A Couple but inevitably wandered to his other work, Wiseman mentioned that he was lunching at Troisgois and asked Chef César if he could make a documentary about it. The bemused chef retreated to his kitchen, asked if anyone knew of Wiseman, and quickly googled the director to find he has had a prolific and widely-feted career via his Wikipedia page. Pretty funny, but speaks to a film borne of an outsider's curiosity rather than an insider’s depth of knowledge. 

I’d never accuse Wiseman of mile wide, inch deep, but when we traverse to a beef-raising pasture or a greenhouse, he adopts a rote, seemingly staged form in which one of the chefs asks questions of the purveyor du jour they probably already know the answers to. It feels done expressly to inform the viewer, which is exactly what I don’t want from a Wiseman picture. As such, I was able to instantly guess incoming sequences ahead of time. We’re going to a vineyard after this cheese ripening scene, I thought. And then, snap, that’s exactly where we go. Wiseman lost the element of surprise with this one, and in these sequences offers no insight that a particularly passionate Google review couldn’t. 

There’s a precision and perspicacity in his other films missing here. It’s not a “Wiseman-in-France” thing per se, but there’s a lot of throat-clearing that never leads to a revelation. Like the last scene: Michel is schmoozing with some patrons and reveals some pretty interesting history of the Troisgros, then: hard cut to an ambiguously French statue and credits. That’s it? I thought, and everything I’ve learned about movies suggests that’s probably not something I should be asking after four full hours. I think, finally, my disappointment is that his other films depict the world as it is—difficult, confusing, unjust—and offer subtle hints through human solidarity of the world as it could be. That quality is sorely missing here.