Yum, Yum, Yum! seems to have been made as a supplementary piece to "J'ai été au bal," Les Blank's film about the Cajun singing duo Marc and Ann Savoy. Though "J'ai été au bal" adequately covers the musical aspect of Marc and Ann's lives, it only touches briefly on their private life and the food they cook, a topic Les Blank loves to cover. What is so unique about Les Blank's films is his ability to embed himself into the mindset of his subjects. In the beginning of Yum, Yum, Yum, we are placed in the back woods of Louisianna with Marc and friends as they begin a fish stew. The questions posed by Les and company are never intrusive, never really asking personal questions, but the answers he receives to questions such as "have you ever used a cookbook" give them more personality than any sit-down interview could possibly do. Lying just below the movie's definite subject of Cajun cooking is the desire of Marc and Ann to see their culture and heritage represented fairly throughout the rest of the country and the world. All too often Cajun people and Cajun cooking have been given a bad name simply because it has been misunderstood. This movie serves as a visual plea for solidarity among the United States and the world for the Cajun people. It's refreshing to see in this movie the kind of survivalist traditions of catching, growing, cleaning, and cooking one's own food that seems to have been all but lost with today's consumerism. This movie shows how even after hundreds of years of living off the land and the ease of pre-packaged foods dangled in front of their eyes, these people still choose to do things the way their parents and their parent's parents did it. This is a great film by America's greatest documentarian.
