***½/****
directed by Frederick Wiseman
by Angelo Muredda Frederick Wiseman sets his sights on legacy-planning in Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros, the venerable documentarian’s staggering but typically graceful 240-minute tour of La Maison Troisgros, a fine-dining restaurant in Roanne, France that has held onto its three Michelin stars for decades. A family-run establishment, the place is shepherded by gruff third-generation chef-owner Michel, who we meet sampling the wares in the market with his more subdued son and protégé, César, before they settle into a favourite Wiseman scene: a sit-down meeting to plan the evening’s menu that’s equal parts absorbing and boring. Though Wiseman treats the day’s market-fresh cauliflower and mushrooms like movie stars in a rapid montage of stills resembling a credit sequence, the real stars and main anchor points he returns to throughout his amiably rambling cross-section of the restaurant–which sets aside a full 30-minute chapter for the cheese man–are the Troisgros men, different kinds of chefs whose diverging styles while working under the same roof embody the restaurant’s past, present, and future.
The titular “Menus-Plaisirs” refers to the restaurant’s famous small pleasures, something Wiseman knows plenty about. Exhaustive as his institutional deep dives are in the abstract, they’re most defined by his attention to minutiae, the camera catching contingent moments where human foibles stick out amidst well-oiled machines like dance companies and library governance meetings. There’s perhaps less of that accidental, stumbled-upon gold than one would like here; even the little moments feel purposeful as we take in the precise, deliberate manner in which young, hungry chefs on the lowest rungs of the brigade score a lamb or fold a dumpling. Impressive as their handiwork is, it’s the humanist flourishes that make the strongest impression, such as a gracious host who preternaturally anticipates and accommodates his patrons’ every dietary restriction, or an awkward and sweet pre-shift pep talk where a front-of-house manager cautions his staff to be mindful of how they speak to one another, since they have a role to play in ensuring a safe, harassment-free environment for their colleagues.
There’s a particular poignancy to the final moments, as the service comes to an end and Michel makes the rounds, where chef and nonagenarian filmmaker alike seem to be taking stock of their mortality. Connecting with frequent diners who go back so far they remember his Japanese period and redirecting compliments for the restaurant’s aesthetic to his wife, co-owner and manager Marie-Pierre, and for the vivacity of certain dishes to his son, the typically grumpy Michel gets wistful, speaking of the restaurant’s recently relocated grounds as a place to lay roots for the next generation: “We saw our future and their future here.” “That’s César,” Michel beams when one patron tries to put his finger on the idiosyncratic use of acidity–several screen-hours after questioning his son’s element-heavy sauces. César doesn’t hear the compliment, but we do, and we’re left to wonder what the next phase of the restaurant might look like, without Michel and Marie-Pierre to guide it and Wiseman to document it. Programme: TIFF Docs
