Rating: 
Summary: Acting and character development are outstanding
Review: The film takes place in modern France, among the world of artists and actors, businessmen and bartenders. Six characters populate the film (along with several minor characters), and their stories overlap and intertwine. By the end, we come to know each character and why his or her life is changing. These multiple subplots may sound boring to some. Indeed, the film is a moderately-paced drama. But <I>The Taste of Others</I> is the type of movie you watch mostly for the acting and the character development, both of which are outstanding. <I>The Taste of Others</I> is a work of dramatic art to be appreciated and savored, not merely a story to be rushed through in anticipation of the climax.
Rating:
Summary: Very tasteful
Review: A successful businessman who lives a life of coinventional affluence falls in love with an actress and teacher who represents for him a world of art and interesting people that has always been closed to him. She rejects him, but he persistantly attempts to ingratriate himself with her, frequently becoming the [end] of jokes among her artsy friends as he repeatedly demonstrates his poor taste. A parallel storyline concerns the temporary friendship that arises between the businessman's driver and the bodyguard that an insurance company has engaged to provide security during an important business deal. Their conversations and differing approaches to women provide much amusement. This film often reminded me of such Woody Allen films as "Hannah and Her Sisters" and "Crimes and Misdemeanors" as we watch a varied cast of interesting characters encounter and transform each other in different ways.
Rating: 
Summary: Exquisite
Review: I saw the Taste of Others in the theater and it was simply exquisite. I haven't enjoyed a film as much as this one in years. All of the acting is very strong, the character development is subtle and intelligent, and throughout the film good taste reigns, without any of the banal excesses that film-makers so often resort to. I can hardly wait until it comes out on DVD so I can watch again!
Rating:
Summary: A comedy for French and American couples
Review: I saw this movie in theatres about 6 months ago and enjoyed it tremendously. The movie is a french comedy about several people seeking love other than that of their spouse or current date. I speak French well enough that I understood it, and from what I heard, others using the subtitles the viewing I saw it recieved just as much enjoyment from the film. Truly a fun experience. Can't go wrong.
Rating: 
Summary: A tale of unlucky in love characters
Review: In this Academy Award-nominated French film, a host of unlucky-in-love characters spin a sophisticated, comedic tale of casual sex and adulterous impulses. All the characters are somehow connected to each other, by friends or co-workers, new loves or new acquaintances. The two relationships that receive the most attention are between Jean-Jacque, a married man, and Clara, the actress/English teacher he falls for, and Manie, a sassy bartender/waitress who deals drugs on the side, and Jean-Jacque's conservative but straight-talking bodyguard. These two relationships pose the most interesting questions of the film: 1) Can both women and men have casual sex without becoming unduly emotionally attached? and 2) What happens when a man lets a woman transform him?
However, Jean-Jacque's struggle and transformation is the heart of this film. He starts off as an almost cartoonish, close-minded, angry man married to a high-strung, meddling interior decorator named Angelique. When he sees Clara perform at the theater and begins taking English classes from her, he enters a new world of trendy venues and artistic sensibilities. He is clearly smitten with her, but he is also completely uninitiated to the world of art, becoming a joke and easy mark to Clara's friends. His transformation to a more open, comfortable person happens subtly, but by the end of the movie, we know he is worthy of Clara's affection.
Rating:
Summary: The Nouveau Riche are different
Review: Jean-Pierre Bacri stars as a monied philistine who embarrases himself hanging wit da impoverished-but-tasteful artist/actor crowd in an attempt to impress a 40-something actress (Anne Alvaro). A little unfocused, with a random subplot involving Bacri's bodyguards and a cute weed-dealing barmaid (Agnes Jaoui, the director herself). Still, interesting, in the slice-of-life Rohmer/Assayas tradition. For the ultimate irony, mention this film in passing to your artist/actor friends and watch them pant like Pavlov's dogs.
Rating:
Summary: for ADULTS only!
Review: No, this film isn't remotely pornographic, not even a single delectable bare breast the whole two hours...can you believe that it's really a FRENCH relationship drama???
Well, aside from the lack of pleasantly gratuitous nudity that normally adorns most French films...YES. Here's why:
1. It's about 90% character-driven. There is something of a plot, but it exists mainly to give the characters something to do while unfolding to us who they really are...and refreshingly, there is zero judgement on the part of the film of any of the main characters. They simply are what they are.
2. There are no simplistic "good" vs. "bad" guys. Instead this film is populated with (gasp!) very believable and human characters who are just familiar enough to elicit the smiling "aha, they remind me of so-and-so!" mental balloon from the viewer, yet free of glib stereotyping so as not to bore us or insult our intelligence. (Read: the French film industry doesn't rely on focus groups to dumb down its movies for the lowest common denominator like Hollywood does.)
3. Sex is treated just as...well, sex. No stupid puritannical or moralistic hangups, no hypocritical voyeurism, no infantile romantic fairy tales. It's just something men and women do, whether for love or simple random pleasure, and whether it's two men or a men and a woman is completely irrelevant. OH MY GOD...this film is just sooooooooooo RADICAL!!!
Aside from those three simply earth-shakingly audacious qualities, this film just has a wonderfully mature, elegantly restrained manner which is almost unheard of these days. Yes the pacing is leisurely (like most French movies) are but never drags (unlike many), because the characters prove to be so deeply human and real not formulaic, so we can't help caring about what happens to them next.
I was especially stunned to find out that the actress who plays Manie, a sexy but subtlely (and irresistibly) spunky, solidly independent young woman who tends bar and deals hashish, is also the film's (first-time) DIRECTOR. Holy Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed and Elvis, I wanna move to Paris!
Rating:
Summary: M. Castella: One Day Love Changes His Life Forever
Review: The film is slow-moving; the film is talky, and it's French! And the guy's name is M. Castella.... Well, the whole premise may look unpromising enough to chase away some of the potential audeince from theaters. No, wait, the film is good. Really. "The Taste of Others" follows M. Castella, president of small factory, who is not so happy, surrounded by bodyguards and very nervous, always bickering wife. One day, a middle-aged woman Clara, his business consaltant hired to give M. Castella English lesson, comes to his office, but Castella, reluctant to learn, turns her away. What a fool, later he realizes, when he accidentally meets Clara on stage of a play he went to see -- she is so beautiful!!! Now he decides to take lessons, and even writes a poem (of love, of course). Clara at first is annoyed, courted by uncooth M. Castella, who seems living in a very different world than hers, but the day will come when she realises that she was mistaken, doing great injustice to him. Meanwhile, many other characters are living their life, and the film also depicts their stories as well. One of them is about the complicated relations between bodyguards and waitress Manie (director Agnes Jaoui herself) working at a bar, but the most impressive is the story of Jean-Pierre Bacri's M. Castella, whose unexpected love to Clara gradually changes himself and other people's life too. Acting is all superb, and the insightful script (written by Jaoui & Bacri) cleverly make a good satire out of our lamentable tendency of misunderstanding others by looking at his/her outward things alone. It is not a laugh-out-loud comedy; it's rather a well-crafted romance that sometimes makes you smile and think. As the film title says, it's not easy to really know "The Taste of Others." It is true that "The Taste of Others" takes time to introduce the basic relations between the characters, and its too talky nature (especially of the first half of the film) cannot be denied. But wait. The film gets better and better as it unfolds M. Castella's love-story. Deservedly nominated in eight categories for Cesar Award in France, and winning four of them, "The Taste of Others" will give you a French cinema at its best. You got witty development of a skillfully-handled story based on capable ensemble cast, and very clever (but not too clever) insight into ordinary people's life.
Rating:
Summary: highly recommended
Review: The Taste of Others is a sweet movie weaving the tale of a group of people loosly tied together by thier social interests and jobs- all of the characters are looking for some meaning in their lives either through romance, surroundings, or self examination. The subtle charm of this movie comes through in the realism of the characters- none of them are downright evil or intirely self-absorbed but they simply make mistakes because they were unaware of what they are doing and the consequences of it. The characters range from a fourty year old actress that's tired of just getting by, to a successful business man who preferes to daydream and allow others to run his life, to a couple that share a life together but are detatched from the sentiments of true love that have failed them in the past.
I would classify this movie more as a comedy/ drama- because of the story's need to express the characters highs and lows lending to the realism that was mentioned before. The acting was superb and heart felt and the dialoge was fluid. The directing style had a sort of Robert Altman thing to it where each persons life lends itself to the overall story and moral.
Rating:
Summary: Life Imitates Art Imitates Life
Review: THE TASTE OF OTHERS may not be for the taste of everyone, but for those who delight in the oh-so-French form of character examination, then this is a film for you. From the very beginning of the movie we feel as if we just dropped in on some French people who are having varying discussions that seem extemporaneous, loose and unrelated: nouveau riche businessman Castella (Jean-Pierre Bacri) discusses mundane notions with his clueless 'decorator' wife Beatrice (Brigitte Catillon); Castella's worldly bodyguard Bruno (Alain Chabat) passes the time with his rather boring buddy Franck (Gerard Lanvin); middle aged actress and English teacher Clara (Anne Alvaro) pines away at how her life in the arts is aimless; bartender Manie (director Agnes Jaoui) ponders why men are so fickle as lovers...you get the picture. But the beauty of this film is how the story interweaves these various isolated 21st Century people's lives and in doing so makes many valid comments on the importance of the arts in our lives, the power of 'opposites attract', the need for meaningful relationships to keep us on course, and the varied ways we all view our surroundings, our lives, depending on our individual vantages. Here is a film with wonderful acting, smart ideas well played out, and a musical score that is so varied and good that it is well worth a CD! But again, The Taste of Others will find its own audience depending on others tastes. In French with English subtitles.
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