Take three themes, three daughters, and a variation on the game of Whopper, slice, dice, season to perfection, add some lemon twists, toss it all around in a wok for two hours and you have a finely tuned drama of living: Eat Drink Man Woman. This film title is derived from an old Chinese proverb that defines the fundamental ingredients of life.

Three Themes: Director Ang Lee first made his mark with The Wedding Banquet in 1993, which put on film what is likely the most extended food-consuming scene in the history of cinema while exploring cross-cultural and intergenerational conflict between a gay Chinese-American in Manhattan and his well-meaning traditional parents from China. In Eat Drink Man Woman, Lee has expanded on these same three themes and developed them in a more engaging narrative vehicle that centers on a widowed man, Mr. Chu (Sihung Lung) and his three grown daughters.

Food: Food is the backdrop for all that takes place in this film as well as a symbolic reference for much of what is most important in life: familial love, zest for living, communication, and passion. Chu is a master chef and a culinary legend who supervises the large kitchen of a major restaurant in Taipei. In his professional circle, he is a virtual superhero. When a disaster occurs in the kitchen of the restaurant (the shark fins disintegrating in the boiling water because they are fake) during preparations for the all-important wedding banquet of the Governor’s son, Chu is rushed in from home and saves the event by improvising an ingenious alternative. At home, Chu uses his skill as a chef to substitute for his inability to communicate with his three unmarried daughters, each of whom, as the film opens, still lives at home. Unable to verbally express his love for them, he reserves his declarations of affection for the preparation of the family’s traditional Sunday dinner. In the opening sequence, as the credits flow, we see in acid-titillating detail the master chef preparing an elaborate banquet for his family. With eminently skilled strokes, he guts and cleans the fish, seasons and tastes, tosses and flips, simmers and sautés a veritable feast of culinary delights that he ultimately sets out on the table as works of art. It is a feast for four that might adequately provide for twenty! Obviously, this is not a film to be seen on an empty stomach! For Chu, food preparations is both his one best mode of communicating his love and the main ingredient in his personal zest for life.

One problem, though! Chu is beginning to lose his sense of taste. His taste buds are failing! This poses an alarming threat not only to his professional acumen but to his very enthusiasm for living. Commiserating with his best friend and fellow chef, Wen, he wonders through a cloud of intoxication, “Eat, drink, women and sex. Is that all there is?” Chu is at risk of losing his faith in life.

There have been other films that have incorporated food in an important way as a symbolic element but none more successfully than Eat Drink Man Woman. The film that most vies with it in skillfully integrating food consumption as a significant element is probably Like Water For Chocolate. Another film that makes particular use of the food motif is Babette’s Feast. Eat Drink Man Woman goes further than any other film in developing the metaphor of delicately prepared culinary fare as food for the heart.

Intergenerational Conflict: A second major theme of Eat Drink Man Woman is Ang Lee’s hallmark: intergenerational conflict. He is a master at elucidating family dynamics and the communication difficulties that exist between parents and children who grow up, afterall, in different times and under the influence of different values and priorities. When asked about Eat Drink Man Woman, Lee had this to say, “I started thinking about families and how they communicate. Sometimes the things children need to hear most are often the things that parents find hardest to say, and vice versa.”

Since Chu, who has been widowed for sixteen years, cannot express his feelings to his children (he is as inept at verbal expression as he is skilled with food), the Sunday family dinner becomes a substitute affirmation of family ties, yet it largely fails to satisfy that function. Behind his back, the daughters grouse about the “Sunday dinner torture ritual.” As Chu, each Sunday, sets out one spectacular dish after another, the daughters all too often make faces, turn up their noses at an offering, or nitpick about the seasoning. Though they share the same house, the four seldom cross paths except for the Sunday dinner. As Lee described it, “At each dinner the family comes together and then something happens that pushes them farther apart.” Chu confesses at one point that he doesn’t understand any of them anymore and he doesn’t want to. The relationships between the daughters and their father, though cordial enough, seem driven mainly by repressed hostilities. One matter of particular concern for the daughters is who will be stuck with caring for the old man in his presumed dotage. The daughters assume that there is little spice left in the old man, as exemplified by his failing taste buds. Their only hope is that he might strike up a relationship with a woman his own age.

Chu yearns for the time when his children accepted his parental authority and manifests this desire by striking up a relationship with Shan-Shan, a precocious schoolgirl, who is the daughter of a divorced neighbor, Jin-Rong (Sylvia Chang). Jin-Rong’s sister had been best friends with Chu’s eldest daughter before moving to America. Jin-Rong is almost live a fourth daughter in the family, making Shan-Shan the closest equivalent to a grandchild that Chu can expect anytime soon, given the lack of active prospects for marriage among his own daughters. Chu makes up masterful lunches for Shan-Shan each day, surreptitiously substituting them for the ones made by Shan-Shan’s mother. Shan-Shan’s lunches soon become the hit of her school and before long Chu is making lunches large enough to feed several of her classmates as well. The joy that Chu derives from care-taking for Jin-Rong and Shan-Shan proves to have a price, however, when Jin-Rong’s meddlesome and motor-mouth mother, Liang (Ah Lei Gua), returns from the States and targets Chu for courtship. It is a sadly comical courtship mostly conducted through billows of smoke from Liang’s chain smoking. Viewers can only hope that the poor old fellow can evade her talons.

Cross-cultural Influences: A third major element in Eat Drink Man Woman is the issue of cross-cultural influences -- the incursion of Western values, technology, and life-style into Asia. We see this from the opening moments of the film, when a hoard of motor scooters rush across an intersection. It is reinforced throughout the film visually by high-rise apartment buildings and heavy traffic and in the social domain by job-related stress, investment fraud, and the increasing acceptability of casual sex.

In comparing the three daughters, we see a kind of progressive Westernization from oldest to youngest. The eldest daughter is the most demure and sexually chaste, in accordance with the expectations on young women in traditional Chinese culture. She, however has become a devout Christian. The middle daughter is an on-the-rise airline executive, dealing successfully with her corporation’s plans for expansion, and “modern” in her somewhat promiscuous sex-based relationship with her boyfriend, but she shares her father’s love for traditional Chinese cuisine. The youngest daughter, at age twenty, works at a Wendy’s takeout restaurant (almost a betrayal of her father’s values), talks Western philosophy with her new boyfriend, and generally be-bops her way through life. Chu observes these incursions on his traditional views and can do nothing about it except to distance himself from his children. Although the details of the cross-cultural incursions are somewhat specific to Taiwan, there is also a universality in the issue.

The cross-cultural theme is also neatly interwoven with the two other main themes, food and generational conflicts. Part of Chu’s despair in relation to his professional life derives from his belief that his art is no longer accorded the respect that it once held in more traditional times in Taiwan. The Chinese population is slowly being acclimated to the more bland and banal fare of American-style fast-food restaurants. If Chu loses his ability to taste his cuisine, he will also lose his last firm tether to his traditional culture! The gradually increasing cross-cultural influences on the daughters also serves to exacerbate the intergenerational conflicts.

Three Daughters: Chu’s three daughters are Jia-Jen (Kuei-Mei-Yang), Jia-Chen (Chien-Lien Wu), and Jia-Ning (Yu-Wen Wang). All are beautiful, all are unmarried, and all are on the prowl. Each daughter is most closely tied to one of the three themes described above. As might be anticipated whenever three sisters appear in the same film, they are quite different from one another so as to entertain us with their contrasts. Each is provided with a subplot that propels the story in something like the manner of a soap-opera.

Jia-Jen: Jia-Jen is a high school chemistry teacher in her late twenties. She is piously devoted to her religion-by-conversion, Catholicism, and is somewhat shy and mousy in her demeanor, despite obvious beauty. She labors in a classroom filled with unappreciative hormonal boys who have settled on the idea that their teacher is already doomed to be an old maid. They even undertake to foment her repressed desires by cruelly faking a series of love letters from a secret admirer and leaving them where she will discover them. Jia-Jen appears to suffer from frigidity, which she hides behind a claim that she is still mourning a college love affair that broke her heart. Jia-Jen’s desire for love is awakened by encountering a ruggedly masculine gym teacher and volleyball coach, all the more so when her interest is reciprocated. Jia-Jen is the daughter most closely tied to the intergenerational issues because she is likely to be the one who will have to assume care-taking responsibility for her father.

Jia-Chien: Jia-Chien, the middle daughter, is an upwardly mobile corporate executive for an airline. She is something of a workaholic but is reaping the benefit of her devotion to her job in gaining the attention of the higher-ups, who have reluctantly decided that she must be promoted despite being too “young and good-looking” for an executive! Jia-Chien, as a child, had taken more interest than her sisters in her father’s culinary passion and had shown considerable predilection for it, but had ultimately been banished from the kitchen because of her father’s firm conviction that she was destined for something better than his own kind of life. Jia-Chien continues to harbor some resentment over this unilateral decision about her life on the part of her father, an issue that gets neatly resolved by a clever plot twist near the end. Jia-Chien is therefore the daughter most closely bound to the food motif of the film. She is chomping at the bit to cut loose from her family ties and move out on her own. Jia-Chien methodically manages her sexual needs by periodically rendezvousing with a self-centered, hedonistic philanderer, Raymond, with whom she shares a sex-only relationship, except when she instead expresses her passion by cooking for him. At work, she is assigned to coordinate a project with a hot-shot Chinese-American “deal-closer”, Li Kai (Winston Chao), who is also handsome and sexy, assuring that romantic tension is bound to develop. There’s a complication, however, that only gets fully exposed in a later plot twist.

Jia-Ning: Jia-Ning, the youngest daughter, is boy-crazy and works in a crummy fast-food place. She manages to situate herself awkwardly in the midst of a love triangle. Her co-worker takes joy in teasing and tormenting her depressive boyfriend, (played by Chao-Jung Chen) by keeping him waiting and standing him up. When she declares herself through with the fellow, Jia-Ning encounters him waiting forlornly outside and takes pity on him, especially when he solemnly tells her “I want to end this addiction to love, but I’m too weak.” Soon she has scooped up this Dostoevski-spouting young man, only to discover that her co-worker still views her romance with him as active and was only playing hard-to-get. Too late, he’s been taken away! Jia-Ning is the daughter most impacted by the cross-cultural currents (the third theme of the story).

Whoppers: One story-telling device that spices this film up nicely is a kind of variation on the game of “Whoppers” or “Big Fish Stories” where fabled raconteurs try to outdo one another with increasing fantastic hyperbolic stories. In Eat Drink Man Woman, its not fabrication but announcements that provide the basis for one-upsmanship. These announcements are part of the Sunday evening ritual dinners. The imminent unveiling of such announcements is typically signaled by increased restiveness, followed by a family member standing ominously and stating, “I have an important announcement to make.” These openings understandably evoke immediate trepidation.

Jia-Chien provides the first zinger by announcing that she has made a down-payment on an apartment in an up-scale high-rise that is under construction and will be moving out when it is completed. At a subsequent Sunday dinner she then has to announce that her hopes have been dashed (it turns out that she’s been swindled). Still later, Jia-Ning declares that she has a “little” announcement: she has met a boy, she is moving in with him, and she is having his baby! Then, still later in the story, Jia-Jen provides what might seem to be the coup-de-grace; she has found a boyfriend and, in fact, he is waiting outside the door and they are already married! Each successive announcement breaks a piece off the family and propels the family one step further away from traditional Chinese values. In the end, however, it turns out that, afterall, father know best when it comes to dropping a bombshell. His announcement is the biggest shocker of all – but will not be devolved here. These announcements provide abrupt leaps forward in the narrative. There are frequent surprises lurking around each corner of this story. Each audacious announcement is as shocking to Chu as to the audience – except, of course, his own. In addition to these explosive announcements, there are several clever plot twists that keep the story interesting, but they will not be spoiled here!

The Bottom Line: Ang Lee put together an outstanding cast for Eat Drink Man Woman, including performers with whom he had previously worked as well as newcomers. The part of Chu was expressly written for Sihung Lung and his solid performance provides the glue that holds the whole project together. It’s a tough role because he has to manifest Chu’s taciturn nature while revealing his inner turmoil largely through facial expression. Ah-Leh Gua delivers an outstanding performance as the irritating but comical Mrs. Liang. The actresses playing the three daughters are all suitably gorgeous and draw out our empathy for their respective angst-filled lives. They have given us characters that are fully developed and involving.

I am sorry to have to admit that I had trouble initially keeping the three young women straight. I’d hate to have to interpret my difficulty as a manifestation of the “they all look alike” phenomenon that can occur in relation to races other than one’s own, but what alarms me is that one reviewer asserted that Lee succeeded in introducing the characters so skillfully that “we never have any uncertainties as to who is who!” If it’s my problem alone, I am duly humiliated. In my defense, I’ll only add that I often enjoy movies that have complicated plots and multiple protagonists more thoroughly upon second viewing because of my limitations in sorting out characters. That was the case with this film.

Eat Drink Man Woman is a dish that combines drama and comedy in perfect proportions. Unlike Chu, Lee’s tastes were fully intact. The extensive emphasis on food preparation ensures that this film will not only stimulate the mind but the gut as well. Eat Drink Man Woman was honored with an Academy Award nomination in the Best Foreign Film category. This delightful film is unrated, but would most likely earn a PG-13 if it were. There is a bit of sex and occasional profanity. The language is Chinese, with English subtitles for the American release. The running time is 123 minutes.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan:

Chungking Express
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Emperor and the Assassin
Fallen Angels
Farewell My Concubine
Hero
In the Mood for Love
Raise the Red Lantern
Red Sorghum
Road Home
Shanghai Triad
The Story of Qiu Ju
Temptress Moon
Together
To Live
What Time is it There?
The Women From the Lake of Scented Souls
Yi Yi

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older