After the viewing of Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, in class I have come up with my own
thoughts on the movie. First, this is a foreign film so in order to understand it, subtitles were
used. Personally I do not like having to read and watch the movie at the same time. It is jut
something that I do not find enjoyable. Other than that problem for me, I thought the movie was
actually pretty good. The main characters of the movie are Chu, the widowed master chef and
his 3 daughters Jia-Jen, Jia-Chien, and Jia-Ning. Jia-Jen is a Christian convert and a school
teacher. Jia-Chien is an executive for a Taiwanese airline and Jia-Ning is a student and works at
Wendy's. Each of the four characters are presented with having their own ideas and problems.
The conflict in each of their own lives bring the problems to the family as a whole but almost
comically through out the film.
I didn't quite understand the significance of the title until I did a little research on it. Eat,
Drink, Man, Woman, is a Chinese proverb dealing with the basic necessities for continuing life,
food and sex. That is exactly what this movie was about. The father was an old, widowed, master chef who wanted to keep his family close and keep the traditional outlook present. This
became very difficult for him with his grown daughters exploring new fields of work, new
religious ideas, and new loves. Chu tried to preserve the culture the best way he knew how,
through food. Once he began to realize he was losing his grasp on culture in his family, his taste
for the food, was no more.
Each of the characters had their own part in the movie and at one point it almost seems
that there was going to be no correlation between any of them. Each character goes through their
own ordeals which seem to drag on for a portion of the film. As each seem to cope and come to
terms