an invitation to look on other people’s plates

ARTE.TV – ON DEMAND – DOCUMENTARY SERIES

Arte has always put numerous culinary programs on the menu of its antenna and its platforms. We sometimes simply travel to the terroirs of France, Europe and elsewhere, as the magazine “Cuisines des terroirs” invites us to do, which the Franco-German channel presents as “a sensual approach to the culinary arts ‘in the field’, meeting those who shape the kitchen, where gastronomy and the art of living have their roots”.

We remember the wanderings in the bellies of the markets of Europe orEach country has its own recipe!, which showed how, in two countries with distant cultures, the same ingredient was processed. Or the wonderful pairing of dishes and pictorial works finely proposed by Xavier Cucuel, in his program “De l’art et du porc”…

“Making History”, program proposed and presented by the historian Patrick Boucheron, does not neglect the dishes, utensils and uses, as evidenced by the very interesting issue devoted to Chinese chopsticks. It is with this approach that most identifies Eat your soup, by Jean-Loïc Portron, consisting of six half-hour sections: “Melting pot”, “Cruel meat”, “Bitter sweets”, “Eating together”, “A table! and “Don’t mess it up!” “.

In particular the fourth part, “Eating together”, where the utensils are mentioned, the type of cutting of the dishes, and where it is recalled that “the gastronomy of squatting or lying down is in no way similar to that of a table”. Or the fifth, “A table! which shows how meal times have evolved.

Extreme inventiveness

The subject is historically very informed, the issues serious, but the whole thing is distinguished by a lively and extremely inventive production, which calls on old engravings (partially animated), cartoons, pubs and vintage news as well as to silent films.

We know that the abuse of this kind of inclusions can be tiring, but Jean-Loïc Portron manages to skilfully save from the seemingly inexhaustible windfall in which he has made his…butter. There is also a very varied soundtrack – signed by the director – with a lot of classical music.

The second episode, devoted to meat, seems to border on militant antispeciesist and antimeat discourse when the question is asked: “Can we in conscience kill an animal to feed on its flesh? » But the author only installs the elements of reflection about a contemporary problematic that he places, as in each episode of Eat your soupalways in an instructive historical perspective.

The commentary is told by a voice (that of the author and actor François de Brauer) which itself has a color of yesteryear, like “spoken news”, which completes the vintage visual touch obviously wanted by the director. References to mythology sometimes have a professorial side, but we will admit that the subject will have enabled us to revise our classics and our antiques.

Moreover, this documentary series is strongly recommended to the youngest viewers, who will learn many things, intelligently, artistically and playfully put in image and sound.