Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros is a two-centuries-later, documentary sequel to The Taste of Things.

Obviously not in a literal sense. . . but from this perspective, The Taste of Things can be seen as the origin story of what’s depicted in Frederick Wiseman’s documentary, and the differences between the 1880s and the 2020s tell a tale about the trajectory of French cuisine through modern times.

AND, both movies use cinema — one through the aesthetics of a documentary, the other with the aesthetic freedom of artistic enactment — to frame and maintain our attention on the physical labor that goes into French (and all?) gastronomy.