Eat, Drink, Man, Woman

Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (1994)

Directed by Ang Lee

Master Chu is a master chef and a stay at home widow father of three daughters named Chien, Ning, and Jen. Each daughter has their own jobs and subplots. Jen has barricaded from other, except for her students as a teacher of chemistry class. Chien is an audio flight attendant and wanted to be a chef. The youngest, Ning works at Wendy’s (who looks more like Pipi Longstocking’s Fast Food), has a French class, and has a boyfriend. Once in a while, Chu’s relatives of Mrs. Liang, Liang, and her little Shan-Shan arrive at Chu’s place for dinner or meeting. Chu was a manager and head chef at the Grand Hotel with his friend, until his friend died as well as his sense of taste. Will this family support together, or they’ll be separated as much as their subplot?

The father is a good chef, as he showed his love to his family through his meals. Two of the daughters of Chien and Ning are boring, their love interests are immediately forgotten, and their subplots are close to identical as the daughter’s overall features. It was almost impossible to keep track which sisters are which. I thought Chien was the oldest, but she was the second oldest, as it’s the red lips did throw me off. It’s just like how adding red lips in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland suddenly makes her older opposed to her original lips being faded pink. I thought Jen was the youngest with her ponytail, but she’s the oldest and was the unique until she cut her ponytail off to look like her sisters, and she was my favorite out of the sisters. Ning is probably the most forgettable of the sisters, as I couldn’t recall a moment. Lust is one of the other themes for the daughters, to the point it feels like a Sex in the City episode, they even play similar music before that show existed. The criticism said the family interaction, but I rarely see any moments together aside from the dinner scenes. Then again, the father has spent the majority of his time isolated in his home cooking with endless supplies and animals such as fish, chickens, frogs, and geese, while twice or thrice in the film he has went to the hotel’s kitchen. The film gets repetitive with many dating scene and every scenes with Master Chu and Mrs. Liang ends with Chu getting a rough massage from someone else. It does get real slow with the conversations that would carry less from Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Tiger, and too much in The Hulk, including the stare blankly at the object. I’ve seen better films that have a family theme and interest such as Wolf Children, The Simpsons, Life With Louise, The Adams Family, and Kramer Vs Kramer. This is one Soul Food I would have eat the least.