| | We rented Eat, Drink, Man, Woman.
Babette's Feast is really a "food" movie, in the way that The Matrix is a "computer" movie. The Net (starring Sandra Bullock) is not a "computer" movie, but an action adventure that involves computers. Eat, Drink, Man, Woman is a family drama that involves food.
The father in this movie is a widower with three adult daughters who still share the family house. How they move out is the plot of this movie. Being the father of a daughter myself, I was able to stay awake through it. For me, the most personal scene was the one where the father announces that he is getting married, not to the "dragon lady" they are setting up with, but to her daughter. "Yes!" I said.
It took a few minutes to understand that this is not a "Chinese" movie, but a Taiwanese movie. At one point, the chef notes that Chinese cooking has been coming to Taiwan for 40 years, but is seldom appreciated. Also, once I saw the nationalist (KMT) flags, I stopped being worried that the Christian girl was going to get beaten up by the police. On the other hand, one of the daughters lost all of her savings because a corrupt real estate venture built on a toxic waste site. Fascism has its costs.
More important to the movie is the cost of sacrifice. The daughter who buys the house after Dad gets a new home for his new wife and step-daughter is the one who gave up her career opportunity to stay home and take care of Dad. That was poignant.
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