OVP: Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)

Film: Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)
Stars: Sihung Lung, Kuei-Mei Yang, Chien-lien Wu, Yu-Wen Wang, Sylvia Chang, Winston Chao
Director: Ang Lee
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Foreign Language Film-Taiwan)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I need to clarify something from last week-I was having a difficult week in my professional/personal life (it happens, and happens more frequently now with Covid...I assume quite honestly the next week will be similar), and I dropped the ball in our week devoted to foreign films, with only The Sea Inside getting the blog treatment.  I plan my viewings in a pretty regimented way, and so I don't have an additional foreign-language film to add to the list of four films that we were going to feature this week, but as luck would have it, we have a backup plan in place.  Monday-Thursday this week, my hope is to have foreign language reviews, and then on Friday, we will do our Official OVP Ballot for the 2005 films, making the theme feel like the quintet I usually bring for weekly reviews.  We're going to start out the week, though, with Eat Drink Man Woman which is an Ang Lee film from 1994 (and, not as 2020 would surely make the joke, a memory test for Donald Trump).

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about three daughters: Jia-Jen (Yang), Jia-Chien (Wu), and Jia-Ning (Wang), all of whom are the children of widowed chef Chu (Lung), whom they live with and have elaborate feasts with on Sunday nights, even though he has lost his ability to taste and is no longer the culinary genius he once was.  The women have their own lives, and are trying to find a way to leave their father, whom they all assume is more dependent on them than he is, and move on with their lives (using their father as an excuse when in reality it's themselves holding them back).  All three women set out on romantic escapades of their own, eventually finding love and/or contentment moving on from their current co-dependence, while also still admitting their familial love for one another.

Eat Drink Man Woman is the kind of movie that occasionally gets nominated for Foreign Language Film that Oscar wouldn't really go for in the United States.  Romantic comedies, especially fluffy light ones like this, might sneak into Best Actress or Best Screenplay, but it's extremely rare that they would feature in the Best Picture Oscar race.  This is a shame, because it ignores a genre of movies that certainly has produced some classics, but Eat Drink Man Woman is not a classic-it's merely a fun movie, that has some admittedly well-constructed twists within its confines, but it doesn't have enough depth or laughs to make it a classic of the genre.

The one distinguishing aspect of Eat Drink Man Woman is the food.  There was a weird period in the 1990's where foreign-language films would have extended sequences that were just essentially what we'd call "food porn" today, where we see the careful, indulgent, almost sensual preparation of gorgeous dishes.  This is easily the most unique aspect of the film upon a modern reviewing of the picture, though without the context of it being a "thing" at the time in cinema, you'd be forgiven for being confused as to why a dumpling being prepared is being lensed as if we're seeing a sex scene.