Eat Drink Man Woman vs. Tortilla Soup
Eat Drink Man Woman vs. Tortilla Soup
Tortilla Soup is a remake of the film, Eat Drink Man Woman. Since one is a remake of the other, there are several similarities between the two, and also some small differences that do not make them exactly the same. Both films center around a father and his three daughters. The main idea is that the father trying to keep his family together through the incorporation of family Sunday dinners, while the daughters are trying to live their own individual lives. They show this through their individual cultural backgrounds.
Eat Drink Man Woman represents a Chinese cultural identity, while Tortilla Soup represents a Mexican cultural identity. There is a strong emphasis on these cultural backgrounds, but also a strong emphasis on how the daughters are beginning to alienate their culture a little bit, due to an American influence.
Food and family, family and food. The two central ideas of the films. We see food when the father brings the little girl lunch everyday, and at the restaurant that the father works at in each if the films. But we mainly see food in these films on the dinner table, every Sunday. Each of the fathers cook a multi-course dish of their own cultural and ethnic cuisine. We see the fathers preparation processes of them gathering fresh ingredients from their backyard to them actually cooking the meals, through the use of a lot of close-up shots. In Eat Drink Man Woman, we see ingredients such as live fish and chicken, peppers, and pork to help with the creation of the authentic Chinese dishes. In Tortilla Soup, we see similar ingredients like live fish and chicken and peppers, and then new ingredients such as cactus, tomatoes, and plantains, to help with the creation of authentic Latin dishes.
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| Eat Drink Man Woman - The final family dinner scene of the film; Chu is about to announce that he is selling the house and getting married. |
The Sunday dinners where this food is consumed is barely actually consumed. Dinner is always interrupted by someone in the family making announcements (moving out, not going to college, getting pregnant, getting married), separating them little by little. The fathers are trying to preserve this Sunday ritual, but the dinners lead to the dissolution of the families, rather than the maintenance of them. Through the continuous disagreements that happen around these two tables, it shows the instability of the Sunday dinners. They are more like Sunday dinner torture. The daughters are not coming to these dinners by choice, they are doing it for their father. Their father who has lost his taste. Their father, who’s dishes do not taste as good as they used to because of this.
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| Tortilla Soup - First dinner after Maribel has moved in with her boyfriend, and announced that she is not going to college right away. |
Food in these films also represent the ideas of control and letting go. Chu and Martin want to control the kitchen and their daughters. By them doing this, there is no true pleasure that comes from the food that they cook and serve. But as soon as they both start the let go a little, letting their daughters live their own lives, and start living their own life as well, things begin to change. First, they can finally taste the food that they are eating and cooking. Also, food is becoming enjoyable and pleasurable again, as well as family dinners.
Even though both films are nearly the same, and there were parts that I enjoyed in both, I did like one more than the other. I personally liked Tortilla Soup more than Eat Drink Man Woman. It kept me nothing but entertained and engaged throughout the entire film. I also knew who some of the actors were in it, such as Hector Elizondo and Constance Marie, so I was able to connect to it more in this way as well. I also like the way smaller details were portrayed in Tortilla Soup more. This is a film that I could see myself watching more than once, and I don’t know if I could say the same thing about Eat Drink Man Woman.
Sources:
Keller, James R. Food, Film, and Culture. A Genre Study. McFarland, 2006.
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