Rent Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)

Food Glorious Food - Eat Drink Man Woman review by MW

A comic and subtle examination of life, love and food in a Chinese household with a fascinating emphasis on cooking huge meals and some brilliant camera work in a restaurant kitchen presided over by the family patriarch. This gentle and teasing film is pure delight and a gourmet's dream come true.

Good storytelling - Eat Drink Man Woman review by AP

This is a film about Master Chef Chu and his three daughters. The eldest is a chemistry teacher whose Christianity has saved her from terminal depression following what we understand to have been a love affair; the second, gifted with her father's skills but never encouraged to further them professionally, is a high-flying executive with an airline company; the third is still a student, busily stealing her best friend's boyfriend. Every Sunday, they are expected to turn up at their father's for Sunday dinner which he cooks. At the first of these he says he has an announcement to make, but is unabale to make it because he is distracted by his second daughter's criticism of a dish and by a call from 'Uncle Wen', a longtime Master Chef colleague in a topflight hotel restaurant as they have a problem with four dishes they are preparing for a banquet. He ups and abandons the dinner, dashes to the hotel, is welcomed into the kitchen and saves the evening. But it becomes evident that Uncle Wen has to taste the food Chu cooks because Chu has lost his sense of taste - much as he has lost his taste for living?

This meal establishes much about the relationship between father and daughters that the film concerns itself with: a father devastated by the loss of his wife years before, doing his best to look after his children, almost certainly anxious not to be deserted by them, but also unable to articulate how he feels about them. The plot is given extra interest by a second family who are clearly very close to Chu's - a young divorcee, her daughter and, later on, her fearsome mother who clearly makes a play for Chu which he appears to encourage.

Meanwhile, the youngest daughter makes good headway with catching her man and the eldest catches the sports teacher in her school after suffering from a series of mischievous love letters. The middle daughter, the one who's a chef manqué, is doing well at work and a promotion to the airline's Amsterdam office is imminent. Her life is complicated and saddened further by an office affair which ends when she discovers something about her older sister.

One of the film's strengths is that this domestic drama is given a number of twists, some unexpected, others sensed but effected with dramatic suddenness. Another one is that Ang Lee is very good at keeping us interested in all three daughters as well as their father by following their stories clearly. Altogether, lovely cinematography, excellent cooking scenes - including a comic one of two young men trying to catch a chicken for the pot - scenes that introduce us to the wide variety of Chinese cuisine beyond the UK takeaway experience, and a sensitivity to human relations, especially between Chu and his second daughter, make for a a rewarding film. Quite long, but I didn't find there were any significant longeurs.