On paper, the premise for Bernard Rapp's A Matter Of Taste sounds hopelessly genial and frivolous, like a sitcom bankrolled by the Food Network or an imported comedy tailor-made for the blue-haired-lady crowd. But in telling the story of a prissy, eccentric tycoon and the waiter he hires to be his official taster, Rapp quietly and studiously undermines these expectations, coaxing a creepy psychological drama out of scenes that aren't as weightless as they initially appear. With impressive economy and assurance, the film unfolds like a long seduction, encouraging a steady degree of innocent curiosity as it delves deeper into bizarre compulsions and unsettling ambiguities. Wearing a placid smile that floats somewhere between ineffectual and dangerous, Bernard Giraudeau plays an extravagantly wealthy businessman who's isolated by his extreme paranoia and fastidiousness. More than anything else, he's particular about his meals, so he offers waiter Jean-Pierre Lorit an exorbitant rate to be his official taster, responsible only for sampling the entrees at five-star restaurants and minding his aversion to fish and cheese. But soon after he accepts the position, Lorit finds his new boss to be far more demanding than expected: He has to give up smoking (Giraudeau's personal physician will X-ray his lungs monthly), make himself available at any hour, and align his palate to perfect synchronicity. As Giraudeau swallows more of his time, Lorit gets drawn further into his eccentric universe and begins to lose touch with his girlfriend (Florence Thomassin) and their bohemian pals. Rapp and co-writer Gilles Taurand add a regrettable framing story that involves an investigator (Jean-Pierre Leaud) questioning Lorit and others after something terrible has happened, a device that distracts from the central relationship and needlessly tips the film's hand over events to come. But at least it's vague enough to not spoil the intricate dependencies that bond employer and employee, flitting suggestively across tangled issues of power, social class, and aberrant sexuality. The weird and increasingly unhealthy symbiosis that develops between Giraudeau and Lorit recalls David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, but Rapp never ventures into such explicitly dark territory, favoring discreet, well-mannered psychosis over the grim portent of a horror film. Deceptively light and nonchalant, A Matter Of Taste offers no shocks and no catharsis, just an insistently mesmerizing descent into a kind of madness that's afforded by privilege, protected by solitude, and mistaken for elite sophistication.