Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)

Directed by Ang Lee | Comedy, Drama | 2h 4m

If you’re looking for a movie to make you laugh, make you weep, and make your stomach grumble, make some time this weekend to sink your teeth into Ang Lee’s 1994 family drama Eat Drink Man Woman.

Set in 1990s Taipei, the film revolves around a single father and his three daughters, all of them caught between traditional Confucian values and growing Westernization.

Mr. Chu (Sihung Lung)—the family patriarch—is the greatest chef in all of Taiwan, but he’s lost feeling in his taste buds and become an irritable homebody. His three daughters are equally lost, unable to find fulfillment professionally or romantically. Each of the three sisters represent rebukes to tradition. Jia-Jen (Kuei-Mei Yang), the eldest, is a devout Protestant who listens to gospel music on her Walkman during her daily commute. Jia-Ning (Yu-Wen Wang), the youngest, works as a cashier at Wendy’s. Jia-Chien (Chien-Lien Wu), the middle daughter, is on paper the most professionally successful of the three. Still, she fails to find joy in her job as an airline executive or her unstable romantic life. And most vexing of all, none of the three seem to be able to get out from under the thumb of their imperious and irritable father.

The tumult of family life often comes to a head at the dinner table, where tensions run so high that Mr. Chu’s exquisite meals often go unfinished. The dinner table is the venue for frequent “announcements” from the family members, with each daughter bringing unwelcome changes to the dining room every night. At the dinner table, we watch as each of the characters struggles to break free from traditional values, bringing amusing surprises along the way.

Director Ang Lee fills the film with commentary on family values and basic human desires. At one point Mr. Chu quotes a Chinese proverb, “eat drink man woman, basic human desires,” lamenting our inability to escape from our need for food and sex.

But don’t let this turn you off—don’t worry, Lee is no Terrence Malick. You don’t have to be a movie buff with horn-rimmed tortoise shell glasses to enjoy this one. Eat Drink Man Woman tells an accessible and relatable tale that is touching, poignant, and witty to the bone. Lee is a natural storyteller. (He would later become a household name with Brokeback Mountain, Life of Pi, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.) The emotions of his story flow like a warm, bubbly stream: tumultuous, yet comfortable so that you feel at ease.

If the plot is not appetizing enough for you, Eat Drink Man Woman is also one of my favourite representations of food on film. The recurring theme of taste and basic human desires often manifest themselves in Mr. Chu’s extravagant dishes. China is more like a continent than a country, and its cuisine is incredibly diverse. Eat Drink Man Woman lets viewers sample just a small slice of that diversity.

If you’re looking for something warm and nourishing, trade in your chicken noodle soup for this movie instead. Tender and sweet, you’ll want to give your parents a call after the movie and remind them how much you love them—who needs soup?

Andrew Zhao is a third-year Political Science, Philosophy, and Mathematics student with absolutely no qualifications to review movies. I am not a “film historian”—sorry, Principal Keil.