Vegetable pie, consommé, roast beef, stuffed green peppers, turkey with truffles, baked turbot, flambéed tart with ice cream inside… Over low heat it takes place between delicious dishes that they cooked at the end of the 19th century and with four hands Eugenie and Dodin, the protagonist couple of this tender culinary film directed by Tran Anh Hung that has hit Spanish screens this week.
The stove of A slow fire also served to stew the reconciliation between Juliette Binoche and the father of her daughter, Benoît Magimel, after many years of estrangement. “It’s a long story,” says Binoche in an interview with La Vanguardia. And then she launches into explaining how her participation in this film came about, which meant the recovery of her friendship with her ex-partner.
“Tran Anh Hung suggested I read the story, I wanted to work with him, but I thought my role was not developed enough. He rewrote it and sent it to me after a while and I loved it, because in the new script there was a real relationship between a man and a woman,” recalls the French actress.
But paradoxically, these changes stopped the project, because the potential male protagonists believed that their role was somewhat blurred compared to that of Binoche: “The actor who was initially linked to the project left because he considered that my character was more developed than his. So they hired another lead, who was in the film for six months, but a few weeks into filming, he left too.”
The director thought Magimel was perfect for the role and “asked me if I was okay with him joining the project,” Binoche recalls. “I said okay, but I was convinced that Benoît would reject the job, because although we have a daughter together, we had been estranged for many years and had no contact. To my surprise, she said yes.”
Magimel’s acceptance made Binoche “happy,” because “that meant we could see each other and talk.” “It was the film of reconciliation,” he says. Juliette and Benoît have become friends again and this is reflected in the complicity they exude in Slow Fire where they play Eugenie and Dodin, the cook couple who have been in a relationship for years, although they are not married, because she has never wanted to lose their freedom.
Dodin is famous throughout France, but Eugenie is not. “The film takes place in 1885 and then the world was very sexist. Now, although we have made progress, it still is and the field of gastronomy is one of the quintessential examples. Women cook on a daily basis, but the great chefs, with very few exceptions, are men,” reasons Binoche, who adds that “changes towards equality take time.”
Binoche is not included among the women who cook every day. She recognizes that she does not usually put herself in front of the stove, so to prepare for the role she took a course in which she learned, among other things, to “cut onions, which involves a very specific movement of the wrist.” It is a task that can end in tears, but the actress avoided tears, because “I put on my diving goggles in rehearsals” and she also learned another trick, “let the water run and put my eyes very close to the open tap.”
It is one thing not to cook and quite another not to be seduced by the wonderful dishes that Michel Nave, Pierre Gagnaire’s right-hand man, devised for A low fire, which was shown at the San Sebastián festival. “I tried all the dishes and I loved them all. That’s my problem, that I like everything,” says the actress who at 59 years old looks great, because she maintains “a healthy relationship with food.”
Binoche has been eating “organic products since she was 10, because my mother liked them,” she stays away from hamburgers, sandwiches and Coca-Cola and “I take my time at lunch.” On Sunday mornings she tries to go to the market “to buy quality products and if I go somewhere far from home for a shoot, I try to find local farmers who grow organic products.”
Although if he really likes something, it is San Sebastian cuisine. The actress explains that “I just bought a property near San Sebastián, an hour’s drive away, which seems fantastic to me because I will be able to travel to Spain regularly.” As long as her intense work schedule allows it. The interpreter has filmed a television series for Apple, she has filmed a film in London under the orders of Lance Hammer and another in Rome, The Return, directed by Umberto Pasolini with Ralph Fiennes, where the actors play Penelope and Odysseus.
