Stanley Coulter Hall, Room 239
Director: Ang Lee
Origin: Taiwan | USA
Language: Mandarin | French
Running time: 124 minutes
The setting is 1990s contemporary Taipei, Taiwan. Mr. Chu, a widower who is a master Chinese chef, has three unmarried daughters, each of whom challenges any narrow definition of traditional Chinese culture. Each Sunday Mr. Chu makes a glorious banquet for his daughters, but the dinner table is also the family forum, or perhaps “torture chamber,” to which each daughter brings “announcements” as they negotiate the transition from traditional “father knows best” style to a new tradition which encompasses old values in new forms. As the film progresses, each daughter encounters new men. When these new relationships blossom, their roles are broken and the living situation within the family changes. The father eventually brings the greatest surprise to the audience at the end of the story.
The title is a quote from the Book of Rites, one of the Confucian classics, referring to the basic human desires and accepting them as natural. The beginning of the quote reads as follows: “The things which men greatly desire are comprehended in meat and drink and sexual pleasure; […]” (Translation by James Legge), Chinese: 「飲食男女，人之大欲存焉」. (From Wikipedia.)
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