This film makes me so damn hungry!

Eat Drink Man Woman

Loris, who surprisingly saw the movie, called it “the Chinese Tampopo”. Indeed it is, although the structure of the two films are very different. “Eat Drink Man Woman” begins with the most scrumptious food preparation scene of all times. That alone made me want to go to China and eat food. French cuisine? Pah! This is what real mastery is. I think what I need is a good job in Taiwan. It might be a small island, but their food is so damn amazing.
When I started the film, I just began to eat my dinner, which was a mapo tofu dish from my favorite food stand – good for me! This is definitely a movie you cannot eat on an empty stomach. In fact, halfway through the film, other things came up and when I finished watching the last part of the film, I ended up feeling extremely hungry. There, the film really didn’t help!

It is amusing how everyone in the film is mostly a caricature (or, like Shanshan’s mother, relatively irrelevant) except for the two main characters, the father and the second daughter. The dynamics between those two is exceptionally developed and carries through the film really well. I know that my own father loves these movies in which father and daughter end up coming to an understanding, and this was definitely one of those. The last scene was quite cute.

The Sunday dinners are the stage for the biggest surprises and the best scenes of the entire film. Through the middle of the film, I thought that there were a few scenes dragging out too long, but towards the end, the multiple plot twists and revelations were very amusing. Sure, they might have been very predictable, but who cares if they are delivered with so much hilarity? The best scene was the one with the mother fainting, that was just too much.

All in all, for a comedy the film might appear a little slow at times, and the Asian 90s look might not help (although I think that the second daughter looks absolutely stunning), but “Eat Drink Man Woman” is a classic showcase of human relationships almost like “Tampopo”. Maybe I am biased because of my closeness to the culture in the film, but if Loris thinks so too, then there might very well be something universal to these kinds of films.