Eat Drink Man Woman
by Ang Lee
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Chien-lien Wu, Kuei-Mei Yang, Sihung Lung, Sylvia Chang, Yu-Wen WangDirector: Ang Lee
Brand: Sony
Writer: Ang Lee
Producer: Feng-Chyt Jiang
Producer: James Schamus
Writer: James Schamus
Producer: Kong Hsu
Producer: Li-Kong Hsu
Writer: Hui-Ling Wang
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Mandarin Chinese (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 124 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-03-05
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: MGM World Films
Movie Reviews of Eat Drink Man Woman
Movie Review: Primordial Exoticizing Orientalism or Opening New Spaces of Emancipation
Summary: 5 Stars
Ang Lee constructs his movies as "cosmopolitan" offerings for both a Taiwanese as well as an international audience. The US audience was introduced to Lee through his foundational cinematic experiments on the immigrant experience (mainly designed for an international audience) with Pushing Hands (1992), Wedding Banquet (1993), and this movie Eat Drink Man Woman (1994). Transcending his place as "immigrant director" Lee comes up with Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000), The Hulk (2003), and now Brokeback Mountain (2005). Brokeback being his return to a proven formula of destabilizing categories such as racial, cultural, and sexual identities through infusing into subjectivities - among other things - sexuality. Let us face it, Eat Drink Man Woman is a sensual movie - it is all about visual, olfactory, and ultimately tactile stimuli in the intimate confluence of well... I'll let you do the math. What we see in Eat Drink Man Woman is Lee challenging conventional romance, problematizing the issue of marital fitness, and intersecting both, in this case, with the issue of age.
Widower and master chef Chu is at the head of a household with three daughters. Not just any daughters, mind you, but effectively three very different and complex women with interrelated yet independent narratives. The eldest, Jia-jen is the devout Christian who can't seem to shake of, as we find out, an imagined affair. In the middle we find Jia-chen, the libertine airline executive who we intuit is a metaphor for Taiwan's growing cosmopolitanism. The youngest, but certainly not the least interesting is Jia-ning the cunning adolescent who works in a local McDonalds - the presence of which should not escape us as a subtle infusion (some would argue a not so subtle) of an ever increasing western presence in East Asia. Master Chu begins to see the dissolution of his control in the two most important aspects of his life - his taste and his daughters. The dinner table becomes a space of both contention and unity in both arenas. It is the space where everyone makes the dramatic announcements: Jia-chen announces her purchase of a condo (the purchase goes awry though). It is a move of defiance. She intends to move out! Jia-ning announces that she is pregnant and is moving out. The spinsteresque Jia-jen cuts loose and announces that she in-the-spur-of-the-moment got married and that her husband is waiting outside. Finally, Chu is not to be outdone. He announces that he is selling the house and is going to marry a much younger woman. This woman has been seen as part of the family for decades - making the transgression somewhat more dramatic. Talk about intersecting issues of conventional romance, marital fitness, and age.
Western audiences need to contend with a few key issues here. First, accept that family morals revolving around a patriarch is, after all, the base of Confucian cosmology. Second, in a conversation between Jia-chen and her lover we are treated to a conversation of a balancing between the yin and yang in her culinary expressions that betray inner turmoil between her and her "friend with benefits." Having outlined all that, we can see Eat Drink Man Woman, in one sense, as a postmodern performative confirmation of the timed honored traditions of Confucianism and Daoism in the immigrant experience in Taiwan. Is it really though? On the other hand, could Ang Lee be guilty of the same accusation often leveled at Zhang Yimou of exoticizing the "Orient?" Cynthia Wong calls it: "making a living by exploiting the `exotic' aspects of one's ethnic foodways. In cultural terms it translates to reifying perceived cultural differences and exaggerating one's otherness in order to gain a foothold in a white-dominated social system" (Reading Asian American Literature 55).
Wong is on to something here. Both Ang Lee in Eat Drink Man Woman and Zhang Yimou in Raise the Red Lantern are presenting - reading both films "as text" - spectacles of critique and transgression. Both seem to telling the viewer that there are aspects of so called "traditional culture" that need re-examination - issues as fundamental as the power of the patriarchy, etc. In so doing, they both needed to contextualize time tested Confucian and Daoist precepts - to set them up and then to shoot them down - to expose them, so to speak. However, in the process of doing so, they also stand accused of making films that are an unconditionally exotic/ethnic tour of Taiwan and China respectively. In the case of the former we are voyeurs in the tragicomedy of a chef-father trying to find happiness in a world gone awry and in the latter the killing of a concubine who seeks transgression in an affair (looking for love, actually) with an all too willing family doctor.
The culinary arts are indeed regarded as one of the great achievements of the Chinese civilization. I am cognizant that I am running the risk of perpetuating a stereotype and I certainly do not want to diminish some of the more important Chinese contributions to world civilization. However, food is certainly one of China's great exports to the rest of the world. Conversely, we also need to be cognizant of Lee's dangerous primordial allusions by re-titling the movie to its anglicized Eat Drink Man Woman. We get this in conversation with Chen and his proverbial wise sidekick. Finally, westerners need to see that despite the wonderful introduction to the wonderful complexity of Chinese culture, we have to use this as a starting point rather than an end point - lest we fall in the trap of consuming what are both "tourist-friendly" films.
Do not be too easily seduced by the Zhang Yimou's visual robustness and deft use of color themes complimented ever so sensually by Ang Lee's color cornucopia in the meal scenes of Eat Drink Man Woman - despite the accessibility of both films culturally we still have not broken through the veil. Good hunting.
Miguel Llora
Summary of Eat Drink Man Woman
From celebrated director Ang Lee (The Ice Storm, Sense and Sensibility) comes a movieso visually stunning that it spans the "beautiful balance of elementsmellow, harmonious and poignantly funny" (The Washington Post). This "charming study of love, family and tradition" (Leonard Maltin) "tickles both mind and body" (Movie Reviews UK). Trouble is cooking forwidower and master chef Chu (Sihung Lung) who's about to discover that no matter how dazzling and delicious his culinary creations might be, they're no match for the libidinous whims of his three beautiful but rebellious daughters. A master in the kitchen, Chu is at a loss when it comes to the ingredients of being a father. Every Sunday, he whips up a delicacy of dishes for his ungrateful daughters, who are so self-consumed that they don't see his attempt at showing them lovegastronomically.So, as relationships sour and communications break down, Chu concocts a sure-fire recipe that will bring his family back together: He creates his own love affair to rival his daughters' affections!This is not a movie to see on an empty stomach. Writer-director Ang Lee's 1994 Oscar nominee tells a family story about a chef and his three daughters through the meals the chef prepares and serves his family. This touching, dryly funny story of a family coping with personal lives and the way those lives intersect with the family relationships captures a shift in generations in Taipei. The father, a famous chef who has lost his taste buds, still cooks, though he draws no pleasure from eating. His daughters, meanwhile, deal with both the disappointments and surprises of daily living and the way their adult lives compare to the expectations the widowed father had for them. A subtle, amusing--and mouth-watering--comedy of impeccable manners. --Marshall Fine
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