Inside a Michelin three-star restaurant

 In the Michelin three-star restaurant Le Bois sans Feuilles, no detail is too small to receive concentrated attention. If you enter the kitchen, you might hear the chefs mulling the merits of using shisho or passion fruit in dishes that have yet to earn a place on the menu. 

 I've never been to Le Bois sans Feuilles, which is located in central France, and probably never will. Lunches are priced in the 300 plus Euro range, and wines, of course, will significantly augment the bill.

 The restaurant doesn't stint on service. Sommeliers will guide you through the best wine parings for the meal you order. The wait staff is intimately acquainted with every dish and ready to accommodate any allergies or preferences you may have. Advance notice appreciated. 

 No, I've never been to Le Bois Sans Feuilles, which has been owned by the fabled Troisgros family for generations. Fortunately for me and other moviegoers, documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman has. A specialist in lengthy films with fly-on-the-wall flavor, Wiseman has made a four-hour documentary called Menus Plaisirs -- Les Troisgros, an immersive elook at how a great restaurant operates.

   A word of caution: Fly-on-the-wall cinema is an illusion; nothing about Menus Plaisirs should be considered haphazard.

  As with Wiseman's previous work (City Hall and In Jackson Heights are two examples), the director offers no narration and no title cards to establish locations or introduce characters. Wiseman doesn't give guided tours; he provides extraordinary access to worlds we might otherwise never penetrate -- not with so much detail.

   Menus Plaisirs  also tells a generational story, introducing us to Michel, the Troisgros family elder, his two sons, a daughter, and Michel's wife. All are part of the family business.

   But it's the chefs who command the most attention. Cesar now serves as head chef at Le Bois Sans Feuilles, one of the several restaurants owned by the family. Leo, a second son, runs another of the family's restaurants.

   As a trio or sometimes individually, father and sons also visit businesses that supply their restaurants with cheese, wine, and beef, all run by people who treat their jobs as callings, much in the way the Troisgros family approaches its businesses. 

    If you're not a culinary expert, some of the dishes --  veal brains, for example -- may prove challenging, but Wiseman, now 93, makes no judgements about any of the Troisgros culinary preoccupations.  

    Should you find any of them a little too refined  ... well ... that's your problem. Among other things, Michel seems like a nice fellow, always eager to chat with customers. He's accessible and the atmosphere at Le Bois San Feuilles, located in a rural area and featuring open space in both the dining area and kitchen, doesn't seem designed to intimidate. 

    Devotees of food television know that watching meals being prepared can be captivating. I'm not one of those folks, but there's something mesmerizing about seeing the Le Bois sans Feuilles staff cook snails in pools of butter or construct (I don't know what other word to use) complex desserts. 

    Wiseman shows what's required to run a renowned restaurant; the Troisgros mixture of experience, intuition,  innovation, and commitment to quality explains how the family's success has been maintained and passed from one generation to the next.

   Le Bois sans Feuilles was awarded its three stars in 1968 and has held onto them ever since, a rare accomplishment that underscores the relationship between high standards and greatness.

    As I watched the film, I wondered. Is one possible without the other?

Small-town life in the Midwest

Documentarian Frederick Wiseman travels to the Midwest for Monrovia, Indiana, a telling portrait of small-town life in Donald Trump's America. Wiseman doesn't focus on characters or politics but on activities that range from planning board meetings to conversations in local cafes. He pauses between scenes to give us views of the town and the surrounding countryside. Observing without commenting, Wiseman leaves it to the audience to reach its own conclusions, even during a visit to a local gun shop. We also see scenes of hog farmers at work, of a meeting in a Masonic lodge where one of the members is being feted for 50 years of service, and of men getting haircuts at the local barbershop. Everyone seems to be subjected to the same style, shaved sides with a bit of hair left on top as a kind of tonsorial exclamation point. Wiseman concludes with a eulogy delivered by a pastor at one of the town's churches and follows that with the burial of the woman the pastor just had been eulogizing. If you're familiar with Wiseman's work -- Ex Libris: The New York Public Library and In Jackson Heights -- you know that he specializes in revealing the quotidian rhythms that dominate whatever scene he happens to be observing. I wouldn't call Monrovia one of Wiseman's best efforts, but it exemplifies an approach in which he captures various places and institutions as if he were recording for future generations. A debate about growth involving one of the town's subdivisions emerges, but mostly we feel removed from the essential concerns of the day. Still, we get the feeling that we know how the town's residents go about filling the Midwestern emptiness that surrounds them.*

*I want to reiterate that I welcome comments, particularly those that expand our knowledge about particular films or films in general. But -- and this is the point of this footnote -- I don't publish anonymous comments. Over the years, I've found that many readers have worthwhile things to say and should in no way be reluctant to take credit for their comments. So, sign your name and chime in.