In The Sopranos, Tony Soprano ate (and ate and ate) with ferocity, his body language distinctive down to the hunching of the shoulders and the position of the utensil in his meaty hand.
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But it is the way Adèle enjoys her spaghetti in big, sauce-coated forkfuls at home with her family that most vividly demonstrates her hunger for pleasure.Ĭhewing as a Class Statement, another category of movie table manners worth graduate-level study, sometimes doubles as Chewing as a Sign of Ethnicity. Certain slobbering male critics have spent a considerable amount of review space admiring the graphic, non-symbolic sex scenes between Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux – a couple of luscious young women hot for one another’s flesh. Pasta, as enjoyed by Adèle Exarchopoulos, serves a similar role in the recent Cannes prize winner Blue is the Warmest Colour. Never mind that offscreen, the actors actually vomited from overeating during the three hours it took to shoot the scene: this is food as sex symbol, consumed in a manner not to be tried without a wipe-clean tablecloth. The eating scene in Tom Jones (1963) is undoubtedly the ultimate expression of grease-slicked foreplay: Albert Finney and Joyce Redman tear into mounds of meat and slurp their oysters, licking fingers to express lust through gastronomic gusto in Tony Richardson’s adaptation of Henry Fielding’s 18th Century novel. Not that it ever will be, of course movies have the power to make everything bigger, even the magic of an omelette.Ī few bite-size categories of chewing warrant study. The fantasy is that if I can master the process as gracefully as the role models on the screen, my life, too, will be glamorous and sexy,– abundant with meals that combine glittering chat with really good chicken drumsticks and wine. So while other movie lovers may savour the recipes and vicariously sip the wine, I tend to concentrate on the choppers. Without getting shreds of lettuce stuck in their teeth. But on screen, people somehow eat… better.
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I have read the etiquette manuals I do not talk with my mouth full.
One wipes crumbs from the mouth, one takes a sip of liquid. I know, in theory, how the work is done: one bites, one masticates, one swallows. Because no matter how closely I study the mechanics, I still don’t understand how they do it. I’m distracted by what chewing conveys about character, about class and about sex. I’m hypnotised by how they move their little teeth and convey forks to lips. My interest in filmed foodie moments is simple and salt-free, however, compared with the complex attention I pay to the way people chew up there on the screen. The very best food scenes on screen convey pleasure intense enough to be felt even though we can’t sample the ratatouille ourselves. At the top of my own inventory I would include the silent cooking of an omelette at daybreak that concludes Big Night (1996) the expression of astonishment on the face of the supercilious restaurant critic as he takes his first bite of the title dish in Ratatouille (2007) and the ecstatic ingestion of an entire meal by a gathering of nuns in Babette’s Feast (1987). For a list-loving moviegoer, the category of Best Food Scene is easy to fill.
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