Eat Drink Man Woman
The Plot
The plot of the story is simple, warm and full of surprises. It is a fun movie to be watched. Despite of being simple, it manages to deliver a heavy message.
Mr. Chu is a masterchef for Chinese cuisine. He’s a widower with three daughters. The first daughter is Chu Jia Jen, the second, Chua Jia Chien and the youngest, Chu Jia Ning. All three daughters are unmarried. Two of his daughters may be consider as a late bloomers.
The story basically centralized around those characters in their daily life. Every Sunday, Mr. Chu will have a family dinner. He prepares the food wholeheartedly as if it is a big banquet. Well, it does seems so. There are a lot of food on the tables but there are also a lot of food left uneaten.
The dinner is one of the way for Mr. Chu to communicate with his family. During dinner, they will talk about something and the funny thing is every time there is diner, the family members will have an announcement to make. Those announcements are the important element that makes the story ongoing. Most of the announcements made are mainly to inform other family members about their relationship. The youngest daughter breaks the stereotype of marriage turn when she announces her pregnancy. Without further questions, Mr Chu sends of her youngest to the hand of a young man. The second daughter’s announcement is about her moving out from the house and career promotion to Amsterdam. While, the eldest announcement is about her getting married. Hence, leaving the second sibling unmarried.
During and between the days before dinners, there are also a lot of individuals’ issue that the film portrays. The second daughter issues are the heaviest compared to other. Her issues is about friend-with-benefits relationship, distance daughter-father-siblings relationship, and career decision to be made. While the eldest daughter issues are about her distancing herself from any intimate relationship and her sense of responsibility towards her father.
Uniquely, all the complicated issues mentioned above are tackled in such a witty and intriguing way. This make the movie easy to be watched and understand by the audience even though it caters to a heavy message. Despite of being an old movie, however, those issues are still relevant until today. Hence, this film is highly recommended to be watched by anyone especially to those who can relate to a cold-warm family relationship interaction because it provides evidence that simple action can be a way for people to channel their love.
There is one full-blown surprise towards the end of the movie! It will leaves you with awe and admiration towards the scriptwriter for a genius wrap up. To avoid making a big spoiler, do watch it yea!
The character
I would like to point out one character only that make the story feels warm and approachable. Well, of course other characters are important as well, but I am more attracted to Mr Chu who portrays exactly the stereotypes that I have for traditional family parenting.
Mr Chu is a realistic portrayal of a widower from traditional Asian father-figure based on stereotype that most people have. Or it may be my own stereotype. I perceived a traditional father-figure as a person who don’t know how to be affectionate towards his children, and this stereotype is enhanced when he is a widower.
Perhaps, this character can be discussed based on situational and personality theory. I observed that Mr Chu has a warm and approachable vibe surround him, however it doesn’t seems so when he is around his daughters. For instance, he is a loving father-figure towards Shan-shan (a child character), a great listener towards Mrs Liang (aunty-like character who is the mother of Jin-rong (a single mother/ mother to Shanshan) but very cold character towards his daughter. I would like to view his behavior based on the Personological system point of view. Personological system was a term coined out by Henry Murray for his personality theory that viewed personality is the result of complex organism responding to specific nature or environment. Here, needs, motivations and environmental press (situational drive) derived from others are very important in determining how a person would behave towards particular people. I remember that the second daughter mentioned he was very warm towards her when she was a child. So, I think Mr Chu started behaving coldly towards the daughters is due to his frustration and sadness from losing his wife. He then channels out the feelings to his children resulting them to become apart. He may feel a great sense of responsibility to take care of the children without their mother. As he loves them, he provided them with sufficient materials and foods as a chef. However, the lack of physical affection and communication make his children perceive him as cold.
Murray viewed situational and social role as the important determinant for personality. I think this is really relevant to Mr Chu character because the situational factor such as losing his wife and taking care of his children while filing up social role such being both father-and mother-like figure to his children has makes him more focused on the burden that he needs to hold instead of looking at what the children needs the most, for him to show his affections.
I also think that the differences between the treatments he gives towards his children from childhood until they are grown up is because the feedback that he gets from his children. Of course they are adorable as a child, however as they grew up perhaps some start to have some rebel or ignore him. This is only my assumption of why he behaves the way he is towards his children, perhaps there are other factor that I missed from the movie itself.
The washing-dishes scene
I choose a scene where the daughters are washing dishes in the kitchen as the most interesting scene that make me reflects on myself. Actually there are several scenes that shows them washing dishes and all of them are my favourites. Of course they are a lot of other scenes that seems interesting and you must be wonder why i am attracted to this scene.
So, what makes that scenes notable to me?
In that scenes, the second daughter are asking about the first daughter opinion about starting a relationship. The eldest daughter tells her that she is not ready and ask her not to worry about her life. She also confesses about the responsibility that she thinks it is her duty to take care of their father who’s getting old once the other daughters leave the house. They also talk about other thing while washing dishes in other scenes. I think that they enclose more about their thought during these scenes compared to their family gathering (dinner time). Dinner time is specifically used for them to make an announcement and not as a place to share intimate conversation. I realized that I could have intimate conversation with my siblings even while we are doing something simple together. You do not have to sit down seriously just to share your opinion but rather the best way is to do it naturally during appropriate times. I choose this scene because it also seems relatable to me.
Lessons
I have learned a lot from this movie. I learned that people have different way of expressing love. Some people may express it through words and actions. Thus it is up to us to be observant enough to know whether they are expressing their love or not. For example, Mr Chu is working hard to prepare the dinner for every Sunday. This is his way to express his love. The sad thing is that people often take other people kindness for granted and therefore often misunderstood the sign of love as the cues for other emotions, hence feeling distance in the relationship just like what happens to Mr Chu and his second daughter especially. So in case people do not understand the love gesture, please verbalized your love to others!
Say it before it’s too late!
I also learned that we cannot judge other’s character based on her behavior alone. For example, the second daughter always rebelling and always says that the father and her are distance when in fact they are the closest emotionally. So it is important to determine whether they meant what they are saying or they are just saying the opposite things from their feeling.
Human relationship is complicated yet it provides comfort in our life.
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