Laura's Reel Food and World Cinema Blog

Big Night is the type of film that seems very simple on the surface, but once you look a little deeper, every single scene has unspoken messages that even the casual viewer can’t help but contemplate. As a film student, It’s part of my job to look for meaning and symbolism in films, but even my mom, a fan of cinema, but not a film scholar by any means, was fascinated by hidden messages and implications this film brings to the table.  The film Big Night is a masterclass in using long, silent scenes that have incredible impact without the use of dialogue. The most notable example of this is the final scene of the film. Secundo walks into the kitchen after the titular big night. Cristano, the waiter, wakes up from where he has been sleeping on the kitchen counter. Secundo cooks simple eggs, and divides the eggs among three plates, and he and Cristano, and eventually Primo, eat their eggs with the leftover bread from the previous night. The scene is silent, and mostly ...

I am white. My ancestors were various shades of european, as is the case for most white people in America. As such, I know next to nothing about the African-American culture shown in both Soul Food and Once Upon A Time When We Were Colored. I’ve never had most of the traditional “soul food” we see in the films, except for mac and cheese.  The families in these films do not look like mine. The culture they share is not the same as mine. The ethnic identity they show through their food is not like mine. So on the surface, it’s hard to find a touchstone to understand their stories from a cultural angle. However, when I read the article by Robin Balthrope, I started to understand how, much like the comparison between Tortilla Soup and Eat Drink Man Woman, food can again bridge the gap between the African-American families in the movies and my own family. The Balthrope article mentions Big Mama’s “four pinches of this,” technique of cooking measurements. Almost every reci...

It’s rare to see a film remake be so similar to the original in plot, but so different in the mood and emotions that the story evokes. Eat Drink Man Woman and it’s remake Tortilla Soup both tell the story of a retiring chef as he deals with the changing lives of his adult daughters as well as rediscovers his own passion for life and love.  With one film taking place in Taiwan and the other in Los Angeles, but having been made less than a decade apart from each other I don’t know if I should have been as surprised as I was with how closely Tortilla Soup stayed to the plot of the original, Eat Drink Man Woman . The different cultural backdrops offer completely different visual aesthetics for the films, both equally beautiful, and an interesting balance to the inherent similarities of the storylines. The basic characters and events are perfect mirrors of each other; The oldest sister, a converted christian and a chemistry teacher who receives mysterious love notes, a...