Eat Drink Man Woman is the 1994 Taiwanese film by director Ang Lee. Upon this film’s release it was met with much critical and commercial praise and helped launch the career of it’s now critically acclaimed director. Lee would go on to produce a string of successful films such as Sense and Sensibility , Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon , Hulk , and Brokeback Mountain . The main language in the film is Manderan .
The film opens with a chef preparing a delectable meal . Lee shots the whole process and preparation of the meal with the chef executing his cooking skills as If he has been doing this for years . The chef turns out to be Tao Chu, who is a widower, dictatorial father, and master chef. His taste buds no longer work and he relies on his assistant When to tell him whether a dish tastes good or not.
All three of his daughters reluctantly still live at home with Tao . Jia-Jen his eldest daughter is a schoolteacher and seems quite content to stay at home with her father. Jia-Chen his second daughter , she is a very successful airline executive who is in the process of moving out. Jai -Chen has all her money invested into an apartment so that she could start a new life. Jia-Ning is his youngest daughter , she has a part - time job at Wendy's.
Every Sunday Chu insists that they sit down for a Sunday dinner. Jia-Chen describes them as their Sunday torture.
One of the themes of this film is the relationship between a father and his children. In a addition to this the age and culture conflict between Tao and his daughters.
The themes of family and tradition are highlighted throughout the movie by the insistence of Sunday dinner by Tao. Mr. Chu prepares these elaborate dinners every Sunday for his three daughters. He puts these Sunday dinners together as an expression of his for his children, although her really has hard time verbally communicating with each of them. This is his way of saying “I Love you “, and it means a lot to the ageing chef. The daughters seem to go to the dinners out of tradition, obligation and respect for their father not because they want to be there. One piece of the film that I found was a direct conflict of the two generations was the fact that Tao’s youngest daughter worked at Wendy’s. The daughter of a Master Chef is working at a fast food resturatnt. It is likely to believe that Tao found this to be insulting to him, because the quality of food is his life and livelihood.
Throughout the movie all of the characters lead separate lives, but every Sunday they come together as one. Every dinner, a member of the family would have a life-altering announcement to make.
The family does not follow many traditions that go along with Chinese culture. One big thing that I noticed is the fact that the daughters arent being married in the traditional Chinese way. The youngest daughter, Jia Vig, defies tradition by getting married first in the family, and also getting pregnant before marriage. The middle daughter, Jia Chien, is a very successful corporate executive who put her career before everything which too defies traditional Chinese tradition
I really enjoyed this film for many reasons. I have encountered some families who were similar to Tao’s. They conveyed the relationship of a repressed family who had a hard time opening up to one another very well . Although it was a very light hearted and humorous film , I feel that the film still was taken seriously and wasn’t overly silly like how some of the films in America would have taken it. I felt that the Theme of family tradition was throughout the entire film was what ultimately kept the family together. Although the daughters found Sunday dinners to be forced and not want to go , it was this that in the end kept the family closer.
Clip from the Making of Documentary
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