Rhapsodies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkaaUuQwRZYMy parents have been doing a movie night with some friends in their neighborhood and based on what they were watching last week and a film I had put off watching for a very long time I decided to take another foray into food movies.

Having been a fan of Ang Lee’s work for some time, I’m kind of embarrassed that I had never seen the film that made him an international name, Eat Drink Man Woman. There really is no excuse for it. Along with knowing he had done it, there was an exhibit at the Seattle Asian Art Museum that played the opening kitchen scene in a loop.

Eat Drink Man Woman tells the story of Mr. Chu (played by Sihung Lung ) a semi-retired master chef who lives with his three adult daughters. Jia-Jen (Kuei-Mei Yang), Jia-Chen (Chien-lien Wu) and Jia-Ning (Yu-Wen Wang), Their relationship are slightly strained and the only thing that holds the family together are elaborate Sunday meals that Mr. Chu creates every week. These are described as a “torture chamber” as this is when important family matters are brought up and is not helped by the fact Chu’s sense of taste has been slowly deteriorating so these meals are not quite as good as they used to be. From here we watch how the live’s of Mr. Chu and his daughters change in love and sorrow.

While I don’t think I was really this film’s target audience I thought it was very good. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and most importantly you’ll have a huge hankering for Taiwanese cuisine.

The next on my list and the film from my parents’ film night, Big Night, directed by Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci, tells the story of two brothers, Primo (Tony Shalhoub) and Secondo (Tucci) two Italian immigrants who own a small restaurant in 1950s New Jersey. Business is not doing very well, mostly because they can’t compete with a nearby Italian restaurant owned by Pascal (played by Ian Holm) that specializes in what the average American thinks of when they think of Italian food (spaghetti and meatballs etc) and while Primo is an absolutely brilliant chef he is also completely uncompromising.

The brothers get as last chance to get some publicity by throwing one final meal on a night that they have been assured that the performer Louis Prima will come to their restaurant.

For the most part, my reaction to this film was “meh” but the good bits, with its all-star cast, are very good and the description of the food and the meal has you wishing that this restaurant was real so you could enjoy a night there yourself.