"Eating Men and Women" is a film directed by Ang Lee and the last work of the Ang Lee family trilogy, released in 1994 and nominated for the 67th Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1995.
Through the life experience of Zhu Dad and three daughters and four family members, the film tells the process of a family decomposition member leaving each other.
Many people only understand the dispersion and reorganization of the family in the film, but they do not understand the meaning of the title "Eating Men and Women" and the unique understanding of the great desires of life in the film.
1
The film begins with a seemingly solemn and harmonious family feast, but it tells the story of the undercurrents that flow beneath the appearance of each member of the family.
Lao Zhu, who is in his sixties, is the chef of the famous Taipei Yuanshan Hotel, with old qualifications and high status, who specializes in Sichuan, Yang, Chao and Zhejiang cuisine, and is the hotel's Dinghai God needle.
Every Sunday, when Lao Zhu was busiest, he would make a table of wine and have a family reunion dinner with his three daughters.
Since the death of his wife, Lao Zhu has raised three daughters alone, but as the children grow older and larger, the communication between father and daughter is becoming less and less difficult.
Every Sunday dinner is the only way for the whole family to reunite and communicate, and although Lao Zhu's sense of taste has gradually deteriorated, he still insists on using pure cooking skills to maintain the harmony of the family.
The small dining table staged the joys and sorrows of the old Zhu family: the younger daughter was unmarried and pregnant, the second daughter was cheated of buying a house, and the eldest daughter had no boyfriend at a large age.
Even Lao Zhu himself, braving the world's displeasure, announced to his daughters something that shocked everyone: he was with Jinrong, who was more than 20 years younger than himself...
2
"Eating Men and Women" depicts the conflict of concepts between Lao Zhu and his three daughters in family life, and the family relationship is broken like a soap bubble, and they are reunited like a broken moon.
The film uses a lot of pictures to show Lao Zhu cooking, a squirrel fish: killing fish, sliced fish, shooting powder, fried fish, duck gizzard to remove the film, red pepper to the head and tail to take the middle section, white radish first sliced and then silked...
Lao Zhu, like most traditional fathers in China, rarely says "love" to his children, but silently puts his love into a plate of dumplings, a plate of buttoned meat, and a braised fish.
For Lao Zhu, this dinner maintained the family, but for the three daughters, it became a routine, the four people had their own concerns, and the food on the table became tasteless like his father's taste.
Although the form of home is still there, the feeling of home has long disappeared, and the daughter's heart has long been scattered, making the father's persistence seem pale and weak.
3
The main background of the whole story is in the family, and most people think that the theme of the story is to talk about the dispersion and reorganization of the family, but in fact it is about the great desire of people.
Every eating man and woman in the film has their own desires: appetite, sexual desire, love, material desire, full of hearted father, absent-minded daughter, oily and slippery man, vitriolous aunt...
The desires of each family member conflict with their own identity, with the etiquette and shame of life, so they cannot express the true thoughts of their hearts.
Old Zhu preferred to concoct a father for his children, but refused to accept a soft sentence; the daughters were fed up with the old-fashioned, silent fatherly love and chose to flee in silence.
4
However, the desires of every man and woman who eats are different from their identities and conflicts.
Because of his father's identity, Zhu Dad could not tell his daughter about his love affair with Jinrong, because of the identity of the chef, even if he had no sense of taste, he had to continue to do it.
Because of her status as the eldest daughter, the eldest daughter felt that she should replace her mother and stay at home, so she made up the lie of her first love and did not study abroad, because of her Christian identity, she could not express her desire to love.
The second daughter, because of her independent female identity, was the first to leave the family, but when the family finally fell apart, she wept for the dispersion of the family.
The little daughter is a girlfriend, but she has a crush on each other's boyfriend, knowing that the girlfriend and boyfriend love each other, and also snatch each other's boyfriend with a knife.
5
In the end, everyone finds what they really want, although it seems that the family is not a family, but it becomes natural and real, the daughter can freely cook the dishes she has loved since childhood, and the father is also generous in criticizing and pointing.
When the old family relationship, which was greater than the warmth of the ceremony, was destroyed, and then rebuilt according to each other's sincerity, the title between father and daughter became sincere, and the tongue became able to appreciate the taste of life again.