The main story is really that of each person's love life, and how their lives effect each other. The father is master chief who has lost all his sense of taste, the oldest daughter who is a cynical school teacher who refuses to fall in love, the middle daughter who is more about her carrier then that of love, and the youngest who's choices in love change her entire life.
This movie takes the four lives of the family, mixes them together, and comes out with one very great movie. Watch the movie with subtitles. The movie is an exciting and moving look into the lives of very special family as they each move, and grow.
Next to Tempopo, this is the best movie about Asian cuisine.Eat, Drink My Kind of Movie I really enjoyed this movie for several reasons. First, I could watch a skilled cook for hours. The technique just fascinates me.
The second reason is that the actors created such a variety of personalities. I guess partly that's a product of the screenplay, but the actors had to have the skills and they do. Because the family is so close, the personality differences really charge the interactions. You become fascinated by watching how they will react to the situations and each other.
When the movie came out in the theaters, I admit I shied away because Asia sent all these "sensuality" movies out with the same hype. So, I just shrugged it off. But I've been renting a lot of Asian movies in the last year, and the number of choices at my video store is getting smaller. That is what made me give this movie a chance. And I'm glad I did.
Widower and Master Chef Chu lives in Taipei with his three unattached daughters, Jia-Ning (the youngest), Jia-Chien, and Jia-Jen (the oldest). Chu lives to cook, principally as Head Chef in a prestigious city hotel, but also for his family. Indeed, the only contact he has with his offspring is over the gargantuan, gourmet meal he cooks every Sunday. Even then, however, familial interaction is at a minimum, and should a daughter reveal an important event in her life with the declaration, "I have an announcement", there's no subsequent discussion or paternal interest. As for himself, aging Chu is losing zest for life. Even his sense of taste is fading. Meanwhile, his daughters are looking for love.
Jia-Jen, still traumatized from being dumped years previous, teaches chemistry at a men's college, and otherwise finds solace in a Christian brotherhood. Jia-Ning works at a Wendy's (yup, that American fast-food Wendy's), and thinks her best friend's boyfriend is hot. Jia-Chien, an up and coming international airline executive, is attracted to the company's new business negotiator. Trouble is, he's the one that broke Jia-Jen's heart.
I mentioned to my wife that one of the best things about foreign films is the chance to see places we're likely never to visit, e.g. Taipei, Taiwan. Moreover, she responded, one sees that life elsewhere is pretty much like life over here. (I guess the Wendy's made a big impression.) Maybe that's my problem with the film. Though the acting is consistently excellent, and all the daughters pretty and worthy of audience sympathy, the movie as a whole, while congenial enough and providing a few chuckles, wasn't notably dramatic, humorous, or clever. I might as well have been spying on the mundane lives of the next door neighbors. Building a story around food has been done before, albeit with other cuisines. Even towards the film's end, when Old Dad chimes in with his own surprising "I have an announcement", the stir it causes passes swiftly. And his lack of overt connection with his daughters is like an airless vacuum. Only at the very end, with Jia-Chien, does his reserve crack a tiny bit. I wanted more of an emotional catharsis.
The best part of EAT, DRINK, MAN, WOMAN is the food. The scenes of Chu preparing his gourmet delicacies, blessedly without a single fortune cookie in sight, approach being fascinating. And they certainly left me with a craving for orange-flavored chicken - my favorite.
