Original title: Yin shi nan nu (1994)
Director: Ang Lee
Starring: Sihung Lung, Kuei-Mei-Yang, Chien-Lien Wu, Yu-Wen Wang, Winston Chao, Chao-Jung Chen
Genre: Family Drama, Food
Language: Mandarin (English Subtitled)
Details: Taiwan , 124min, Color
Tag: The Ingredients of Life
A film of three sisters and their widowed father, each live a completely different lifestyle. The Chu family meet every Sunday to eat what the wonderful meal their chef father prepared. At the meals the girls talk about their love affairs. Their father silently listens, only wanting them to be happy and to marry the right man.
The oldest, Jia-Jen (Kuei-Mei-Yang), is an unmarried school teacher. The second oldest, Jia-Chen (Chien-Lien Wu), is a airline executive. The youngest, Jia-Ning (Yu-Wen Wang), is a twenty year old romantic who works at Wendy's. The challenges faced by the Chu family are universal, the difficulty of communicating across the generation gap is something everyone knows.
"Everything is much different in Eat Drink Man Woman than the other films I've made. It has a bigger cast and a lot more complex story line... I started thinking about families and how they communicate. Sometimes the things children need to hear most are often the things that parents find hardest to say, and vice versa. When that happens, we resort to ritual. For the Chu family, the ritual is the Sunday dinner... At each dinner the family comes together and then something happens that pushes them farther apart."
-- Ang Lee, writer/director