Yin shi nan nu

Eat Drink Man Woman

1994

Directed by Ang Lee

Starring: Sihung Lung, Yu-Wen Wang, Chien-lien Wu, Kuei-Mei Yang, 

Sylvia Chang, Winston Chao, Chao-jung Chen, 

Lester Chit-Man Chan, Yu Chen, Ah-Leh Gua, Jui Wang

I watched this film a while ago, and while I had seen its remake, Tortilla Soup, and liked it, I found (surprise, surprise!) that the original was darker, and much more nuanced.  

Master Chu (Sihung Lung) may have retired from his profession as Master Chef at one of Taipei's fine restaurants, but he hasn't given up his passion for cooking. He lives with his three daughters, whom he has single-handedly brought up since his wife died more than sixteen years ago. When the movie begins, we see him at home, working quickly and efficiently to cook the Sunday dinner for his family. 

 

For all his artistry, there is something mechanical about his movements as he quickly prepares one delectable dish after another. It is an emotion (or lack thereof) that seems to be mirrored in his second daughter Jia-Chien (Chien-Lien Wu), a successful corporate executive, who is the closest to him in nature, and therefore the most likely to butt heads with him. Jia-Chien, who is in a friends-with-benefits situation with an old friend, Raymond (Lester Chit-Man Chien), describes the dinners as 'torture'.  And indeed, the tension at the dinner table can be cut with a knife. 

 

However, dutiful daughter that she is, she still shows up at her father's table, where she quickly antagonises her father by criticising the soup. It is true, she tells her sisters when their father leaves to get the next course. He is losing his sense of taste. Her two sisters also have their own reservations. The eldest, Jia-Jen (Kuei Mei-Yang), a school teacher, has been mourning the loss of her college boyfriend for years. She has turned to Christianity for solace, and while Master Chu says nothing, he is keenly aware of the fact that she is a spinster. The youngest, Jia-Ning (Yu-Wen Wang), is a college student who works at Wendy's, to earn money.  

Jia-Chien is the first to make an important announcement (the first of many in the film) at the dining table - with some amount of trepidation. She is moving out as soon as her apartment is ready. (She has had these plans for a long time, and has sunk her life's savings into what she sees as an escape route.) 

 

Master Chu is non-committal. Real estate is a very smart investment, is all he says. Jia-Jen is not very happy at the news, though she later claims otherwise. As the eldest, she had slipped into her mother's role after the latter's death. This comes at the cost of her personal life and there is a resentment that simmers under her tightly controlled façade. The meal goes on, and it seems Master Chu has an announcement of his own to make, but he is interrupted - by a distress call from the restaurant he used to work in. He is still the person they call for when the shark fins that the restaurant was to serve a General and his guests' at the general's son's wedding feast, turn into a gooey mess.

 

As soon as they are alone, Jia-Chien tries to make amends but is given a glimpse into the frustration that her sister feels - their father will also be her responsibility, as the family had become when their mother died. The sisters have grown so far apart that none of them really understand the other. 

Jin-Rong (Sylvia Chang) drops in just then with her little girl, Shan-Shan. Her arrival interrupts the sisters' tete-a-tete. Jin-Rong is the sister of Jia-Jen's old classmate, and a close friend of the Chu family. A divorcee and single mother, Jin-Rong has come to talk about her mother, who had been staying with her sister in the US. Her mother doesn't approve of her elder daughter's husband because he is American, says Jin-Rong, and she, Jin-Rong, is beyond help anyway because she is divorced. Jin-Rong is also worried because her ex-husband has a private investigator tailing her, so he can fight her for the custody of their daughter. In turn, Jia-Jen also shares some of her frustrations with her friend. 

 

The fact is that none of them really know what their father wants - nor have they asked him. 

  

Their father is seemingly emotionless, hiding his feelings behind an inscrutable demeanour. And though he is a good cook, he is not very happy. As he shares a drink with his friend Old Wen (Jui Wang), after the kitchen crisis has passed, he complains that the world is changing too fast for him; no one really appreciates traditional Chinese cuisine (or indeed, culture) any more. What is worse, he bemoans, he is losing his sense of taste. His cooking skills are just fine, but he has to depend on Wen now to taste the food to ensure that it is just right. His frustration with life is growing, and when Wen cracks a sexual joke, Master Chu retorts: "Eat, drink, man, woman, - is that all there is to life? 

Meanwhile, Jia-Neng (Yu-Wen Wang), the youngest, who had run into the neglected boyfriend of her friend and colleague while on her way to the Sunday dinner feels rather sorry for him. Her friend is playing hard to get, and the boy is so in love that he continues to wait for her even though she is cruel to him. He is 'addicted to love' he confesses, and when she meets him again, Jia-Neng grabs hold of him and takes him off with her to eat lunch, giving him some much needed advice while eating. 

Subsequent meetings bring them closer, a fact that Jia-Neng keeps hidden from her friend. 

Master Chu has recently taken up jogging in the morning, 'to keep healthy', he says. One morning, he meets little Shan-Shan, and is aghast to realise that she buys lunch in school when her mother is too busy it for her. He takes it upon himself to make lunch for her everyday. It will be their secret, he tells her, and when her mother gives her lunch, he will eat it instead of Shan-Shan. 

 

He returns home, and wakes his daughters up as he usually does. When Jia-Chien gets into work, the chairman announces a new corporate hire at a team meeting. Li Kai (Winston Chao) is the wonder boy, a young achiever, pegged to go far, and on a fast track. It is a huge fillip to the airlines to be able to hire him, and they are looking to him to discover ways in which to increase the airlines' profits. Jia-Chien is intrigued. And attracted.

 

Back home, a chance jocular remark about her sister's clothes (their father does their laundry and always mixes up their clothes) and her life brings their old tensions to the surface. Even though Jia-Chien apologises immediately, the argument deepens. 

When Jia-Jen remarks that no one really cared that she had taken on the role of their mother, a wounded Jia-Chien retorts that when their mother died, Jia-Jen only lost a mother; she lost both her mother and her sister. 

The next day at work, Jia-Chien receives two bits of news - the good news is that she has been promoted to the chief of the airlines' European bureau. The bad, or at least, slightly worrisome, news is that she is being transferred to Amsterdam. On her way back home, she stops by Raymond's apartment to tell him the news. She decides to cook an elaborate dinner, and as she does so, she confesses that she used to always hang around the hotel's kitchen when she was a child. She loved to cook, and had an affinity for the culinary arts, only her father made her go to college. She's resented him since, and their relationship changed for the worse. 

 

Her night is not over yet. Old Wen was taken ill while tasting Master Chu's cooking; he collapsed in the restaurant and has been rushed to the hospital. Master Chu is there with him, and his first call is to Jia-Chien, who hurries to the hospital. By the time she arrives, however, Old Wen is stable. That they share a fondness is evident in their conversation. Uncle Wen, as Jia-Chien calls him, asks her to forgive her father for not allowing her to become a chef. He sent her to university because he wanted more for her, says Old Wen. 

 

The next day is not any better - though she and Li Kai have come to a better understanding of each other, Jia-Chien discovers that the builder of the apartment of her dreams had decamped with the deposit money. The company was bankrupt, and the site was condemned. And when she returns to the hospital in the evening to visit Uncle Wen, it is to find that he had checked himself out that morning. But she sees something else that gives her pause.

 

There is still worse to come. Jin-Rong's mother has come home from the US, and Jin-Rong has brought her home to visit the Chus. Madame Liang (Ah-Leh Gua) has very strong opinions, and is not at all loath to show that she considers Master Chu very attractive.  She also has a very dim view of life.

 

The sisters are a bit taken aback at her brazenness. But civility forces them to endure her little barbs, and her constant attempts to charm their father. 

Jia-Chien is not the only sister to get bad news. The following day Jia-Neng finds her friend in tears. Her boyfriend wasn't coming along to wait for her any more, and she didn't know why. And she did love him, she did!

 

A guilt-ridden Jia-Neng is forced to confess that she had become intimate with Guo-Lun (Chao-Jun Chen) because she didn't think the friend cared. And soon it is her her turn to make an important announcement at the dining table. 

 

Master Chu says nothing; he silently watches his youngest daughter become the first fledgling to leave the nest. It is her departure that makes Jia-Chien realise just how resentful Jia-Jen is at the circumstances that keep her tied to her home. 

 

It turns out that Jia-Jen is also frustrated at work. Each morning when she walks into the staffroom at school, she finds an anonymous love letter addressed to her on her table. Who is writing this to her? The old professor who sits next to her? The teacher opposite? There is also the new young and attractive volleyball coach, who has invited her to come and watch a volleyball game. But the truth, which Jia-Jen guesses accurately, is even more unpalatable.

Meanwhile, something is nagging at Jia-Chen, something that her sister said the previous night about her ill-fated romance. A surprise encounter at work wipes it out of her mind, until it is brought back with a vengeance. Her reaction doesn't get the response she expects. What is worse is that Li-Kai doesn't even remember Jia-Jen at first. And when he does, it is Jia-Chen's turn to get a surprise. 

Once again, that is not the only surprise she gets that day. When Jia-Chien stops by at Raymond's apartment to talk things over, there is another unpleasant surprise in store for her. Raymond has another woman inside, he explains apologetically. Taken aback, Jia-Chen leaves, but the day is not over yet. Uncle Wen, who had checked himself out of the hospital, had returned to work, only to sits down on his chair and die. Master Chu is bereft, and of the three sisters, it is Jia-Chien who is most affected. 

 

Soon, her father and she are in for another surprise. It appears that Jia-Jen, after many years of abstinence and mourning, is in a relationship with the volleyball coach. Not only that, the relationship has deepened rather quickly. So quickly in fact, she has an announcement of her own to make. 

 

So goes another sister to her own home. And strangely enough, it is Jia-Chien, who was supposed to be the first to leave, who is left alone with their father. The house is silent, but not for long. At the next family dinner, where Jia-Chien, her father, the two married daughters, their spouses, Jin-Rong, and her mother, Madame Liang, are all present, Master Chu gets up to make his own announcement, one that he had been trying to make for a very long time. The daughters' reactions vary, but not very much. It is safe to say that they disapprove.

What is Master Chu proposing to do? Why do his daughters disapprove? And if he does what he sets out to do, what is there in Jia-Chien's future?

Yin shi nan nu (Eat Drink Man Woman) is director Ang Lee's third feature film, and the first to be set, and shot in Taipei. 

It is also the concluding part of his trilogy about the friction that develops between parents and children in ethnic Chinese families. (The first two films were Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet. Director Lee referred to them as his 'Father knows best' trilogy.) According to Lee, in Chinese culture, food is something to share, and he decided to use food as the film's central motif. He is also recording the slow decay of traditional Chinese culture, and the inroads that modernity has made into urban society. In the film, while Master Chu is respected as an old school chef, his youngest daughter works in a Wendy's outlet. 

 

Sihung Lung is perfectly cast as the dour and incommunicative Master Chu. The only way he knows to show affection is to make complex and elaborate feasts for the family's weekly dinner. It is a tradition that he follows, and it is clear that it is his way of holding on to the tenuous bonds that bind him to his daughters, who seem to be growing farther away from him each day. As he says to Old Wen, "I don't understand any of them, and I don't want to know. Let them grow up and leave. It's like cooking. Your appetite's gone when the dish is done." 

His sense of taste is also diminishing, along with the ennui that has set in. His profession doesn't mean the same any more, since there are very few people around who still appreciate the art that goes into the preparation of food. Yet, one can see that the passion for cooking is still there - in the food he prepares for the weekly dinners, in the lunches he prepares for little Shan-Shan, when he tells Old Wen (when the latter asks him how he is going to turn the ruined Shark Fin Soup into 'Joy Luck Dragon Phoenix'), "I don't know, but I will by the time I finish." 

 

Jia-Jen is the stereotype of the repressed spinster. (Even her profession, that of a school teacher reinforces that stereotype.) She is supposed to be mourning her long-lost college boyfriend, but as Jia-Chien's interrogation of Li-Kai shows, the truth is not so simple. Whatever be the cause, she has turned to religion for solace, and has been abstinent for nine years. When Jia-Chien expresses her astonishment at her sister marrying a 'heathen', she replies jokingly (but with an underlying seriousness), "He will be."

 

Jia-Chien, the middle sister, is the most successful of the three. She is also the most driven -  by her passion for cooking which she is forced to renounce in her childhood, by her need to get out of what she considers the stifling atmosphere at home, by her affinity to her father. In the final reckoning, she is the responsible one, the capable one. As her boss says when he hands her the promotion, she is too young for the job, but she is far better than the male staff who are working in Amsterdam. Even losing all her savings in the real estate scam doesn't faze her - as she tells Raymond later, it just sets her free to go to Amsterdam and begin anew. 

And she is the one to whom her father turns everytime there is a crisis - when Old Wen is sick, when Wen dies, when Chu seeks some comfort at the end. 

 

It is her redemption as well - the father who had turned her away from her passion for cooking,  is finally eating what she cooks. Not only that, his dying taste buds are awakened. They are the closest in affinity, and it seems right that they should come to a better undestanding of each other over food. 

I cannot not mention the fantastic Madame Liang. Ah-Leh Gua is an absolute joy to watch. She plays the predatory matron with wicked charm; she is sure that no woman can live alone, but doesn't have much respect for men as a whole. She sets her sights on Master Chu when she first meets him, and amidst clouds of cigarette smoke, sets about seducing him. She is so sure that an old widower with three daughters would love to have a wife like her that she completely misreads his feelings. 

 

Yin shi nan nu is an engaging film in many aspects. It is the emotions, in fact, that draw you deeper into this film. The story, of a father and his three daughters, and the fraying of the bonds between them as the daughters grow and become adults in their own right, is a universal one. Director Ang Lee moors his story in a social and cultural ethos that he is familiar with (it is his only film that is set in his hometown of Taiwan), but the emotions and the decisions (made by the characters) transcend those barriers. Set this story in India, for instance, and it will still resonate. The 'generation gap' and the inability to break through well-entrenched tradition, is a common-enough experience.  

Ang Lee uses food as a narrative prop. The banquet that Master Chu cooks up for dinner in the film is almost a ritual. Food in Chinese culture is meant to be shared. And dining is a social occasion. In an interview, Lee admitted that the scenes with food were shot to draw a sensory response from the audience. While that may have been his primary motive, Lee also uses food to show the blocked channels of communication between the family members. For all the luscious dishes that the patriarch cooks, the characters are often talking over the food, about the food, but there is precious little eating going on in the film.

The film doesn't travel the tried and tested path of a single narrative. Each character gets his (or her) own story, and each of the four interlinked and sometimes, parallel narratives, share a common theme - that of the inability of each to really communicate with the others. But even though Master Chu says that he doesn't understand his daughters (and doesn't want to), he still labours for hours to cook up a feast for their dinner. It is this dichotomy that underlies the whole film. There is love, but it is unsaid. There is conflict, but it remains unspoken (until it blows up). And while the meals are made ostensibly so the family can bond over dinner, we see that the characters move further away from each other, especially after each 'announcement'. The film therefore becomes darker and much more complex than the plot suggests.    

Last, but definitely not the least, are its visuals. 

 

I am not a great fan of Chinese food, and as a vegetarian, certainly cannot imagine eating most of what is shown on the table, but oh, I haven't felt this hungry since I reviewed Babettes Gæstebud and Ustad Hotel.  This review should probably come with a warning - do not watch on an empty stomach!