Eat Drink Man Woman | Sylvia Chang, Ah-Leh Gua | "It's Like Cooking, Your Appetite's Gone When...

Eat Drink Man Woman | Sylvia Chang, Ah-Leh Gua | See hear laugh cry

DVDs:

Eat Drink Man Woman

	Eat Drink Man Woman Sylvia Chang, Ah-Leh Gua MGM (Video & DVD), 2002 average customer review:based on 105 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

"It's Like Cooking, Your Appetite's Gone When The Dish Is Done"

Note: Chinese with English subtitles.

Chinese, widowed father and professional chef Tao Chu (Sihung Lung) cooks a sumptous meal every Sunday evening for his three grown, single daughters who still live at home whether they want it or not. Though retired, he also continues to help out at a prestigious restaurant when his expertise is required. The strange thing about all this food preparation is the fact that Tao has lost his sense of taste since his wife's death and cannot truly enjoy his wonderful culinary creations.

The only real familial interaction takes place around the dinnertable and even there the communication is poor. Tao is a private man who expresses his love in the preparation of the meal. His daughter's Jia-Jen (Kuei-Mei-Yang), Jia-Chen (Chien-Lein Wu) and Jia-Ning (Yu-Wen Wang) don't appreciate their Father's efforts and can't wait to find husbands and move out.

As the story progresses they all find their own way in life and one by one move out. Unexpected by the daughter's, their Father has also been active and finds a young wife and a new life.

Beautiful poetic story, in an almost flawless production. In the end when his daughter Jia-Chen prepares a meal for her Father he miraculously rediscovers his taste buds. Touching, emotionally understated ending like most Asian films are. Very Highly Recommended!!

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See hear laugh cry

Master Chu (Sihung Lung) is a semi-retired chef living with his three unmarried daughters (Kuei-Mei Yang, Chien-Lien Wu, and Yu-Wen Wang). This wonderful film spans the period of their lives that sees a number of significant changes in the lives of the family members. Although family relations are often strained, they always come together around a sumptuous Sunday dinner prepared by Chu. Throughout the film, these dinners are punctuated by formal announcements by the daughters that herald major changes for everyone. At the end of the film, Chu himself has an announcement that no one expects.

Many factors combine to make this such a wonderful film. In addition to the talented cast, director Ang Lee gives us a rich feel for the texture of life in modern Taiwan as well as gorgeously shot cooking sequences that will have you rushing to the refrigerator (or the nearest Chinese resteraunt). Highly recommended.

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Very Full-filing Film!

No I didn't watch "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," this is my first "Ang Lee" movie and I am impressed. I like foreign movies because most of them do not follow the Hollywood standard of relying heavily on famous movie stars to make cash for the studios at the sacrifice of a good plot, skillful acting, and good storytelling.

This movie is a slice of Taiwanese life. Master Chu is a renowned chef and a widower who raised three beautiful daughters. The movie observes the lives of the members of this family and the people around them. The storytelling is simple and sweet. Ang Lee has us observing the character's lives as forces around them change the circumstances they find each other in. The film is engrossing and satisfying as we watch the conflict of tradition and modernization affect Master Chu and his loved ones. I'm sure I would've enjoyed it ten times more if I spoke Chinese.

I made the mistake of watching this movie with an empty stomach. Never do that. The cooking scenes are fantastic. The food Master Chu prepares is a feast for the eyes. It's also got a very entertaining love-relationship storyline and is quite serious and comical at the same time.

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2 things to remind you here:

for this movie titled as 'eat, drink, man, woman' basically was wrong. this four words together in chinese mean:
'eat, drink and sex' are the only desires we human beings are interested. after you've been fed satisfactorily and got the energy, the next thing you naturally could and would think about is, well, SEX. that's why confucius said, 'eat, drink and sex are the only desires and lust where peoples' minds are setting upon.'
but not in this mis-interpretated movie.
in this movie we saw a papa-san chef retired from grand hotle, taipei, taiwan, doing a daily gourmet cooking ritual so complicated out of a barrenly equipped family kitchen, that's first thing totally impossible! how could he afford buying so many food and ingredients and doing it in that specific tough and poor era?
the 2nd ridiculous fatal flaw was that this retired chef obviously stole a lot of cooking wares and expensive table wares from grand hotel before he retired.
did you notice that he got all the complete sets of commercial cooking utensils? the complete expensive commercial standard matching plates, soup bowls, rice bowls, saucers, cups, even chopsticks?
the problems of ang lee's production group was that they totally overlooked the logic, the possibility and the feasibility of convincing a thinking viewer to accept such poor arrangement. you simply could not just borrowed so many things directly from the grand hotel's restaurant and let those stuff show up in the retired chef's home and made him look like a master thief committed grand theft.
how could a guy owned so many expensive and complete sets of commercial stuff? did grand hotel ever discover how many items were missing? if the pilferage was so serious, then why nobody ever noticed, not even his 4 daughters?
how could this old chef snatched so many huge items from the hotel's restaurant kitchen to his home kitchen was beyond my imagination. obviously he's not just a great chef, he's also definitely a master thief.
ang lee directed this movie just based upon the face value of these 4 chinese words was only a proof that his interpretation of the chinese culture is so wrong and so shallow, just like his choice of making the 'the crouching tiger and the hidden dragon'.
since the story he picked to make it into movie was actually the worst part of the whole saga. that part was long after the author quitted writing of this novel, and then had to do it again by hooking up from the ending of his last famous and successful novel to cash in more easily and faster (just like so many famous american writers). because he became so poor after quitted writing, he needed the money to pay the debt and to make a barely affordable living, he then quickly wrote this totally unnecesary sequel--the worst part of the saga--that almost ruined his whole achievement.
this sequal had turned all the great depth of the former hero and heroine into helpless wimps and allowed the ruthless and conscience-less new heroine to mess up and turned everything upside down.
it's so ironic that the author would have chosen in such way to finish his great work of pre-modern-day chinese literature in a 180 degrees turnaround, and pathetically picked up by ang lee again later into a mindless chinese wu-shiah movie.

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Fulfilling third-part of Ang Lee's "Father" trilogy

Taiwanese director Ang Lee is now best-known to US audiences for his breakout cross-cultural hit "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," as well as well-respected English language films "The Ice Storm" and "Sense and Sensibility" (with A-list cast Emma Thompson and a pre-Titanic Kate Winslet). But he earned the right to helm those films by first directing a trio of movies he refers to as his 'Father' trilogy: "Pushing Hands" (1992); "The Wedding Banquet" - my personal favorite (1993); and this film (1994) - released with the Mandarin title "Yin Shi Nan Nu."

Each of the parts of this trilogy stars the late actor Sihung Lung in the role of the father. Here, he plays retired (only somewhat it turns out) hotel chef "Master Chu." As in the other parts, the movie centers on the father's changing role in dealing with his offspring. Here, he deals with his three adult and - as the story breaks - unmarried daughters trying to find their way in life.

There are brilliant insights here into Chinese culture as well as depictions of parent-adult child friction and misunderstanding that will resonate with anyone, regardless of culture.

My only (slight) criticism of the film is that at almost two hours and ten minutes, I felt like the story could have used a little tighter trimming in the editing room. Still, "Eat Drink..." is well worth your time.

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