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1994 129 min Samuel Goldwyn Rated PG
A remarkably assured comedy-drama of domestic life in Taiwan, Ang Lee's EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN explores how families use meals and other rituals to appease their hunger for love in stressful times.
Widower Mr. Chu (Sihung Lung), one of Taipei's leading chefs, laboriously prepares gourmet meals each night for his three unmarried daughters: Jia-Jen (Kuei-Mai Yang), a high school teacher and recent convert to Christianity, Jia-Chien (Chien-Lien Wu), an ambitious airline executive and a talented chef in her own right, and Jia-Ning (Yu-Wen Wang), the youngest, a cheerful student who works part-time in a fast food restaurant. The harmony of this close-knit family is soon disrupted by romance, as the daughters cope with the blandishments of three very different men and Mr. Chu commences a relationship of his own.
Writer-director Ang Lee has described this film as "the last in my 'Father Knows Best' trilogy." Whereas PUSHING HANDS (1991) and THE WEDDING BANQUET (1993) focus on children who disappoint their more traditional parents, EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN is about parents who fail to measure up to the expectations of their offspring. At its best, the film echoes and parodies the characteristic themes, if not the stylistic rigor, of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. Lee's more playful sensibility comments on changing Taiwanese values through ironic juxtapositions and detailed scenes of food preparation. With Western influences (Christianity, classical music, interracial marriages) and modernity (technology, sexual liberation, divorce) constantly intruding on family life, elaborate dinners become the last surviving group ritual.
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