Eat drink man woman

Eat drink man woman

An interesting film that focuses heavily on Chinese culture, Ang Lee brings us a film to express the importance love and relationships. The film takes place in modern day Taiwan, and focuses around a family heavily set in Chinese traditional ways. An elderly master chef named Chu, lives in his home with his three unmarried adult daughters. Living in the house you grew up in is generally tradition for unmarried children. The three daughters are named Jia-Jen, Jia-Chien, and Jia-Ning.

Jia-Jen, played by Kuei-Mei Yang, is the oldest daughter. She is particularly shy school teacher, who seems to be very passive towards men as she claims she is still nursing a broken heart. She even seems somewhat envious of her younger sisters’ luck with men. Jia-Chien, played by Chien-lien Wu, is the middle child. She is a beautiful and successful career woman. She does not seem to be looking for a serious relationship, but she does occasionally sleep with a man who is an ex-lover. She later finds out that this man is engaged but still wants to cheat on his fiancé with Jia-Chien. She is sickened by this and breaks off their relationship. Also throughout the movie she finds herself in a personal dilemma when a man that her older sister claims to be the one that “broke her heart” begins to show attraction to Jia-Chien. Jia-Ning, played by Yu-Wen Wang, is the youngest. She is twenty year old who manipulates her friend in order to get to her friends boyfriend. Eventually she not only successfully wins over her friend’s boyfriend but she tells the family she plans on marrying him.

As the film progresses, each daughter encounters new men. These new relationships with these men quickly form, and as they develop the daughters roles are broken and the living situation within the family changes. The major theme of the movie is the importance of love and romance in one’s life, they need it to live. This idea relates to food which also plays a huge role in this film, because like love you cannot live without food. Much of the love between the family is only expressed through eating together.

This movie, although a bit long, grasps the attention of its viewers from start to finish. Full of unexpected twists and turns, your interest is almost impossible to be lost. Seeing the traditional and very different Chinese culture to that of ours is something to not take for granted. The film really shows you how different these people live yet how similar they act to us. I highly recommend this film; I think it’s one of the best foreign films I have seen.