"Eating Men and Women" is the last in Ang Lee's father trilogy, which begins as a delightful food movie that shows every step of his cutting, smoking, frying, boiling, kneading and kneading, which makes people marvel at the complexity of Lao Zhu's cooking, even if the film has no other plot, just cooking rice and cooking will make people enjoy watching.
This film is about people's desires, food color, sex, just like the title, eating men and women, people's great desires.
The protagonist, Lao Zhu (Lang Xiong), is an elderly chef whose abilities have declined, but still meticulously prepares dinner and wakes up for his three adult daughters every day. The eldest daughter, Jia Zhen (Yang Guimei), is a teacher of good character and excellent character, immersed in Christianity and replacing her mother's vacant seat. The second daughter, Jia Qian (Wu Qianlian), is a wayward airline female executive who makes plans to leave home while playing. The third daughter, Jia Ning (Wang Yuwen), is a student and fast food restaurant waiter, and a clever girl who wins love with a horizontal knife.
From right to left, they are the eldest, the second, and the third
The most ironic person in the movie is the second daughter Jiaqian, who was the first to escape from the family, and she was the most traditional in the end. At the beginning of the plot, only she has sexual experience; by the end, she is the only one who has no home and sexual partner, and even her father has run away (and formed a new family with others). I think that I can see through the hypocrisy of the family at a glance, but take on everything when the family is facing disintegration, and I am often the smartest and rebellious child in the family, and the second daughter Jiaqian is such a role. She is also the backbone of the whole film, and without her, the film would not have become a classic.
The last meal at the end of the movie is only two people, the father and the second daughter
In dietary men and women, the real conflict is not between daughters and fathers, but between tradition and modernity. The Taiwan Ang Lee shows is in some ways not much different from the city on our side, where toy stores are filled with Disney products, young people eat at burger shops, and the streets are packed with busy people. This is life, we are all Chinese, and human nature is common.
Most of Ang Lee's films are inseparable from human desires, often exist in reality, and people are ashamed to talk about it, as screenwriter Wang Huiling said: "Eating and eating are things on the table, desire, men and women are things under the table, and things under the table can never be discussed on the table."
The questions this film asks—and its answers—are exactly what these people want, to eat men and women, to have great desires.