A perceptive and thoughtful film about family, food, romance, and paving one's own way in the world.
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Editor's Note: Don't get excited (or annoyed) that a new edition has just come out. It's been a tradition at DVD Town to welcome aboard new reviewers by having them write up a review of an older release for which we have no review on file. So a big DVD Town welcome to Sam Vicchrilli! We hope you enjoy his first review of many. JP
Ang Lee's Oscar-nominated third film bears the title "Eat Drink Man Woman," but a fitting alternative title might have been "Jia-Chien and Her Sisters" as it has much in common--love, family and food--with the Woody Allen picture.
The setting in "Eat Drink" is Taiwan, but it's certainly not the same Taiwan as master chef Chu's formative years. Chu (Sihung Lung) is at odds with the speedy, modern world around him. The film opens with him, lone parent to his three daughters, calmly and expertly preparing a meal--from live fish to cooking pot to serving bowl. The natural noise of the operation--a knife tapping against wood, steam escaping from a wok--is much more inviting than the images and sounds of traffic congestion that juxtapose this scene. Hordes of motorbikes and automobiles move out of frame, hurriedly traveling to nowhere.
The point of differing generations and attitudes is further driven home when we learn that Chu's youngest daughter Jia-Ning (Yu-Wen Wang) works at an American fast food joint. Chu's food prepared with care, Jia-Ning's thrown together. One customer complains that he asked for chicken, waving around a floppy sandwich. "That is chicken," he is told, left to wonder what's really resting between those buns. The value of food, especially as a means of bringing people together (and observing prettily as they tear themselves apart) is a major idea and visual motif of the film, adding a welcome layer of depth to a picture that might otherwise be accused of being a dressed-up soap opera.
As we watch Jia-Ning and her two other sisters, Jia-Jen (Kuei-Mei Yang) and Jia-Chien (Chien-lien Wu) prepare to end their day's activities to travel to their dad's, we get a sense of how different they are. Jia-Ning is pretty and playful; Jia-Jen quiet and pious; Jia-Chien a little more difficult to pin down, a bright businesswoman prone to promiscuity with the deepest mixed feelings about her father. Perhaps it is for this reason that she soon emerges as the protagonist of the picture, even though it is ostensibly an ensemble picture, with each actor playing his role well.
Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters" is bookended by Thanksgiving dinners; Lee's film revolves around Sunday dinners at the family home where Chu, as all good cooks do, makes more food than could possibly be eaten, even at multiple sittings. Something each daughter has in common is that they eat at these dinners together out of a sense of duty to their dad, not out of desire. Even though they all live under his roof, it is clear each sibling is pulling in their own distinct direction, all of which lead away from Chu.
Though there are, for better or worse, similarities between Taiwanese and American cultures, here is one breaking point. American children are expected to be out of the house at 18; in Chu's household, daughters aged 20 to 30 are fearful of telling their dad they want to move on.
With its parameters of family and paramours in place, "Eat Drink" engages in a witty, thoughtful discussion of this family and the various ways its members approach love's labors. There is a great irony in their discovering how unfamiliar families can be. The love interest of Jia-Ning comes as a surprise; an accidental usurpation instigated by casual conversations with the jilted boyfriend of one of her co-workers. The co-worker pretends not to care for the young man, though she later claims she was just playing hard to get. Jia-Ning, with no pretensions or games to play, falls gently--and accidentally--in love. Jia-Jen, by virtue of her devotion to Christianity, acts content to have an ineffable boyfriend of sorts, but this position is put to the test when she meets the new volleyball coach the school where she teaches and begins to receive unsigned love letters.
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