That should make you want to immediately romancing with the whole movie, right? I have to thank the unknown guy who gave the effort to edit the scenes and presented it to us so neatly.

To make it official by the way, here’s the real trailer for you to see.

Now, let’s cut the chase and allow me to share my thoughts about this film, just briefly to keep it from becoming a spoiler.

Master Chef Chu has been acting cold to his family ever since the death of his wife. Not only that, he loses his taste buds’ senses although he’s a legend in Chinese kitchen of an upscale hotel. Even so, Chu maintains the Sunday dinner tradition with his daughters, where he will cook colorful and appetizing Chinese cuisine made from a full, one-day preparation.

The film then cleverly tells us about each character’s story – starting from how complicated the relationship between the daughters and the dad, between the siblings, and each of their love stories. Even though at first, the second daughter – the most beautiful and the most promising among other claimed to be the one who hates Chu the most, turns out to be the one that cares about him so much. While the other two siblings use their love stories as a mean to escape from their fathers “clutches”.

However, I personally don’t see Master Chu as somebody who’s annoying or dictating, because it turns out that he’s caring as well and it was all a matter of communication. Although I have to admit that he’s making a really controversial surprise at the end of the movie and that made me laugh hard! I have to applause Ang Lee for his effort on creating a masterful tempo from start to finish, good overall comedy, and a big bang in the end. The editing of the film was also clean and neat, but most importantly, the film features a lot of good Chinese food and the process of making it.

The food somehow becomes a focal point to many scenes and as a catalyst as well. The tension somehow reduced back to normal because of it – especially if we see it from the modern POV where people adore food more than back in the 90s when this film produced. It’s a solid work of art by Ang Lee. It’s a dramatic comedy where we see awkwardness of Eastern people meets culinary refinements and Western-kind of romantic impulsiveness. Hopefully you can understand what I said with that! 😀

=====

EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN (Yǐn Shí Nán Nǚ) (1994)

Drool Level: **** (gimme gimme!)

Director: Ang Lee

Producer: Hsu Li Kong, Hsu Kong

Screenwriter: Ang Lee, James Schamus, Hui-Ling Wang

Starring: Sihung Lung, Yu-wen Wang, Chien-lien Wu, Kuei-mei Yang

Music: Mader

Editing: Tim Squyres, Ang Lee

Genre: Drama, Comedy

—–

Pictures taken from various sources