dir. Ang Lee
year. 1994
country. Taiwan
run-time. 123 mins
rating. PG
£6.00 (£4.50 conc.)
Doors - 6:00pm
Film - 7:00pm
The third film in our Ang Lee’s Chinese Classics season.
This Taiwanese drama centers upon the relationships within a Taipei family. Mr Chu, the father is a master chef who's lost his sense of taste. His wife died so now he lives amongst his three grown daughters. All three really want to get on with their own lives. The oldest daughter Jen, is a school teacher adept at hiding her feelings after she suffered a bad love affair in college. Kien who works for the national airline as a senior executive has just put all her savings into a new apartment. Young Ning is in school and works at a fast-food joint. She is getting involved with her best friend's boyfriend. Life within the family gets more tangled when Chu marries Madame Liang, the single mother next door.
In 1994, the film received the Asia Pacific Film Festival Award for Best Film, and in 1995 it received an Academy Award Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
“The title is a quote from the Book of Rites, one of the Confucian classics, referring to the basic human desires and accepting them as natural. The beginning of the quote reads as follows: “The things which men greatly desire are comprehended in meat and drink and sexual pleasure; […]” “: Wikipedia
“Wonderfully seductive, and nicely knowing about all of its characters' appetites, "Eat Drink Man Woman" makes for an uncomplicatedly pleasant experience. “ New York Times