Silvio Soldini's The Tasters draws on Rosella Postorino's 2018 novel, itself inspired by real events, to craft a meticulous portrait of the final years of World War II. In 1943, the people of a village in East Prussia are wracked by the loss of their husbands, fathers and sons. They struggle for food under the shadow of the nearby, half-destroyed forest, where mosquitoes have been burnt away only to be replaced by a swarm of soldiers guarding Adolf Hitler's headquarters, the Wolf's Lair.
It is Rosa Sauer (Elisa Schl ott) we follow into the village of Gross-Partsch, in what's now in Poland, in the bleak autumn. With her husband at the Russian front and her home in Berlin devastated, she moves in with her in-laws, but SS officers soon come calling. Along with other village women, she is taken to the Wolf's Lair and forced to become tasters for the Führer – healthy German women fit the “delicate task” of ensuring Hitler isn't poisoned. Over the months that follow, in an atmosphere of menace and coercion marked by the anecdotes of Hitler's chef, and the arrival of Lieutenant Ziegler (Max Riemelt), the mostly widowed women form alliances. As the rumours swirl of Allied forces approaching, Rosa contends with the effects of the war on herself, her friends, and the soldiers who guard them.
More commonly known for his romantic comedies, Soldini's career has increasingly embraced drama, and now this bold step into period drama. The director has spoken of his concern at making The Tasters an authentic experience, and it's an immaculate attention to detail that expands the film from the Russian Roulette of its central concept to explore the extraordinary and complicated feelings of the time.
This role of the tasters, with its repeating threat of death or serious harm, thrust upon them by the increasingly paranoid Third Reich, morphs with the women's will to survive. The trials and horrors visited on them – from unwanted pregnancy, to assumed identities, and the fate of their loved ones – all result from the conflict palpably consuming the insides of Germany and its people. As news of Allied advances comes, Sauer asks, “Can we hope to lose?”
The Führer they are helping to keep alive is only heard on the radio, particularly proclaiming his destiny after surviving the famous assassination attempt in July 1944. But hero worship remains, and while the soldiers go about their irredeemable duty, it's their hanging looks and occasional smiles that give us a glimpse into their minds.
Soldini's interest clearly lies in this very human experience, but the measured attempt to let these ideas breathe in this diligent film leaves the drama a little too signposted. A compelling rhythm develops, but it falls into familiar beats. While Scholtt sparkles in the central role, as Rosa moves from adrift outsider to confident and adept survivor, the twists and turns of her relationships occasionally feel contrived and the emotional hits of on-screen atrocities a little too well-worn.
So there's a feeling that The Tasters has dialled down the drama of the situation a little too much, missing an opportunity to fuse the high-concept dilemma with the circumstances that are emotionally and physically breaking its characters. Postorino's novel took its story from real-life food taster Margot Wölk, who, as the film's end titles confirm, only revealed the existence of Hitler's tasters in 2012. But the film, with the tamer name of Le Assaggiatrici, to use its Italian title, has lost a little of the bite of a book called At the Wolf's Table.
Ultimately, however, it's about the taste, and there is something in the steady plaintiff cry of this struggle to comprehend and rationalise in the face of terror and uncertainty. Rather than a roar, it's the whimper at the end of an existential crisis. And in this very human war film, where there's only the sound of one bomb and one devastating pistol shot, it's the murky moral choices that have the most resonance for our time.
The Tasters was previewed as part of the Europe Calling strand at the Chichester International Film Festival.
