Bernard Rapp's "Une affaire de gout" has an unusual take on the controversial and sensational subject of homosexual love and passion:the leitmotif is food and the eroticism is more on the psychological than on the physical side.
A big-shot businessman employs a young and good-looking waiter to be his "taste-tester," as he is extremely meticulous when it comes to food quality, suspects that someone might put his life on danger by poisoning him, and is particularly averse to cheese and fish.He pays the young man a hefty salary, shelters him in a nice and comfy mansion and subjects him to a rigorous "fasting" and "asceticism"---in the process, he becomes the businessman's most trusted and influential right-hand man.The young man is all too willing to let all this pass,as, according to him, he wants to be absorbed in the tycoon's "craziness."
In the course of the film, we learn that the tycoon harbors a deep-seated pain and trauma, for his father died of drowning brought about by a ship mishap as he was about to bring them home some "cheese" and when his body was found, it was discovered to have been eaten by "fish" (thus, the businessman's aversion to them).
Therefore, we may reasonably assume that by having his food tasted first by the young man, the businessman is seeking once again the approval and assurance of a father-figure (though admittedly much younger than him)---the things which he never had because of his father's untimely death.
Or, conversely, the wealthy man is trying to act out the role of a caring and concerned father to the guy, a kind of living up to the legacy of his late father so that his death may not be so much of a burden and a source of guilt for him.
But, as the relationship between the two men is pathological in nature, it reaches the point where the wealthy man starts insulting and eventually abandons among the rags the young man, culminating in a tragic event that, in a different mode and context, makes the former suffer the same fate as his father.
With this, "Une affaire de gout" feels like a case history by Freud or, in some respects, by Menninger, as the homoerotic element is subtly manifested in certain forms of behavior and action that the characters take, whether they're aware of it or not, and the instances wherein they injure themselves or suffer from certain kinds of organic illness suggest a form of self-destruction that they're covertly aiming at, both as a means of punishment (for some "guilty" and "immoral" act) and a source of pleasure (serving as an "outlet" for homoerotic impulses and cravings).
Well, I guess it's "a matter of taste" whether one can accept the film's revealing and disturbing premises or not.
