The movie is about the life and relationship of a father and his three daughters, using food and drink to symbolize the love-hate relationship between a man and a woman, with a very strong family atmosphere. Each character has their own distinctive and complex personality and destiny, and they are all searching for their own happiness and homecoming. The father, Lao Zhu, is a senior chef who is about to retire, the eldest daughter, Jia Zhen, is a teacher and Christian, and the second daughter, Jia Qian, is an airline executive. At the end of the movie, everyone has found their own destiny, but the ending of Lao Zhu is shocking. While shocked, I have to admit that I am most convinced by Lao Zhu, who was originally thought to be the representative of traditional ethics but is most capable of breaking through the boundaries of family and ethics, and living the life of “an old cow eating young grass”, ushering in the second spring of love, which makes people straighten up. The second spring of love comes to him, which makes people call him a bull’s-eye.
1994 / Taiwan, China, U.S.A. / Drama, Family / Ang Lee / Lang Xiong Yang Guimei
After his retirement, the only remaining master of Chinese cuisine in Taiwan, Lao Zhu (Lang Xiong), is experiencing the awkwardness of old age: the sumptuous dishes he painstakingly creates every Sunday do not attract his three daughters (Yang Guimei, Wu Qianlian and Wang Yuwen) to the table, who are now grown-ups and have hidden more important things in their hearts than having dinner with their father; the sudden death of a longtime friend leaves him with a gaping hole in friendship; and the most important thing for a chef is to be a good cook, which he is not. The sudden death of his longtime friend leaves him with a gap in his friendship; the loss of the most important sense of taste for a chef pushes him to the bottom of his life.
The three daughters are busy with their own affairs, but also worried about the old Zhu’s old age, planning to find a companion for him, but they did not expect the old Zhu has quietly talked about the “twilight love”.
After the surprise, the old Zhu most valued inherited his cooking talent of the second daughter Jiaqian because of their own life experience, the father, her relationship with her father has a new understanding, and the old Zhu to say the bigger surprise, is still behind.
