The actors who play Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel) and his live-in cook, Eugénie (Juliette Binoche), were once married in real life (1998 - 2003).
The ortolan is a species of bunting. It's netted, then kept in the dark whilst being force-fed grain. It is then drowned in armagnac, roasted and eaten whole.
It's traditional in France for the ortolan to be eaten with a napkin covering the diner's head. There are various explanations for this. Some say it's to enable the diner to spit out the larger bones discretely; others that it's to hide such an overindulgent act from the eyes of god.
It's traditional in France for the ortolan to be eaten with a napkin covering the diner's head. There are various explanations for this. Some say it's to enable the diner to spit out the larger bones discretely; others that it's to hide such an overindulgent act from the eyes of god.
Official submission of France for the 'Best International Feature Film' category of the 96th Academy Awards in 2024.
The French term for Baked Alaska translates as Norwegian Omelette.
While the producers acknowledge that the film's soundtrack reproduces large parts of Michel Legrand's score for Joseph Losey's "The Go-Between" The Go-Between (1971) , in particular making use of that score's very distinctive chord sequence, French audiences are likelier to recognize that same sequence from the closing credits of each episode France Télévision's long-running and very popular true-crime series "Faites Entrer l'Accusé" ("Bring In the Defendant"). (Legrand is also credited there.)