Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)
Directed by Ang Lee
Retired and widowed Chinese master chef Chu lives in modern day Taipei, with his three attractive daughters, all of whom are unattached. Soon, each daughter encounters a new man in their lives. When these new relationships blossom, stereotypes are broken and the living situation within the family changes.
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What critics compared Eat Drink Man Woman to
The film “Chef” heralds the glorious return to the big screen of food porn, a term once ascribed to “Babette’s Feast,” “Eat Drink Man Woman” and “Big Night” but now mostly relegated to the Cooking Channel.
"Chef" is the food movie for the food truck era, a film that doesn't appear to be headed for classic status in the vein of "Big Night" or "Eat Drink Man Woman," but which taps into the zeitgeist in an assertive, interesting way.
Foodies who feasted on “Big Night,” “Babette’s Feast” and “Eat Drink Man Woman” may flock to “ Chef ,” a lightweight but high-calorie confection in which the actors often run the risk of being upstaged by all manner of scrumptious-looking cuisine.
The rodents aside, Ratatouille looks absolutely delicious, easily meriting a place alongside foodfests such as Tampopo and Eat Drink Man Woman .
Ratatouille is probably the first animated feature to deserve inclusion on the list of great “foodie” films, alongside Babette’s Feast, Mostly Martha, Big Night, Like Water for Chocolate, Sideways , and Eat Drink Man Woman .
It’s not on par with “Babette’s Feast” or “Eat Drink Man Woman,” but it will make you lick your chops.
The other follows two petty thieves and the girl they both desire ( Wang Yu -wen, who later starred as one of the daughters in Ang Lee ’s “Eat Drink Man Woman”).
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Anybody familiar with Lee’s oeuvre understands he’s not in this game to collect visual effects kudos; the director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) has a grace behind the lens that more than matches the now majestic mise en scene in front of it.
Before he became an internationally renowned filmmaker and two-time Academy Award winner for Best Director (Brokeback Mountain, Life of Pi), Ang Lee was carving out a nice career in his native Taiwan.
His early family-oriented Taiwan films like "The Wedding Banquet" and "Eat Drink Man Woman" were followed by his adaptation of Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility," family angst in "The Ice Storm," Civil War drama in "Ride with the Devil," martial arts/fantasy in"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and, now, he enters the stratified realm of the comic book super hero with Stan Lee's "The Incredible Hulk."
(And heck, even Hulk.) Lee has worked in a variety of genres over the decades, and has employed different visual styles depending on the material.
But repression has been Lee's dominant theme -- from the virtuosos locked in by duty in Eat Drink Man Woman and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, to the would-be romantic and sexual adventurers thwarted by societal designs in Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, and Brokeback Mountain.
Director Ang Lee ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "Hulk") once again impresses with his seeming command of such disparate material as his early trilogy exploring the relationships between fathers and their children ("Pushing Hands," "The Wedding Banquet," which also featured a gay protagonist albeit in a romantic comedy, and "Eat Drink Man Woman"), Jane Austen ("Sense and Sensibility"), American suburban angst in the 70s ("The Ice Storm"), Chinese martial arts and comic book super heroes.
Brokeback Mountain is the ideal project for Ang Lee, a director who has probed the sore spots of repressed people throughout his career: the gay-themed The Wedding Banquet (1993), Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), Sense and Sensibility (1995), The Ice Storm (1997), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), even Hulk (2003).
But director Ang Lee -- who knows his way around gay love ("The Wedding Banquet"), confining social strictures and rituals ("Eat, Drink, Man, Woman," "Sense and Sensibility") and the wages of repression ("The Hulk") -- treats the source material with such deference that it's as if the entire movie were made in New Yorker typescript.
Lee, who once directed such romantic comedies as “Eat, Drink, Man, Woman” (1994), has now made “Eat, Drink, Man, Man” and added a few new verbs to his vocabulary: ride, herd, bust-broncos, shoot coyotes, camp out and saddle up.
Before he became an internationally renowned filmmaker and two-time Academy Award winner for Best Director (Brokeback Mountain, Life of Pi), Ang Lee was carving out a nice career in his native Taiwan.
That subtle study of petty human duplicity and hidden desires fits Eat Drink Man Woman into Ang’s filmography, including The Wedding Banquet; Sense And Sensibility; The Ice Storm; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ; and Brokeback Mountain.