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, and elopes with a coach from her school. The youngest sister, who begins a relationship with her co-workers ex-boyfriend, and eventually moves in with him. The middle sister, a successful business woman with many career opportunities, who secretly wants to be a chef. And their father, A semi-retired chef whose lack of passion in life has taken away his power of taste, only to be regained when his secret new love is finally embraced. There are minor differences likely changed for the sake of cultural differences; baseball and volleyball, pregnancy and quitting college. But these differences are only surface-level. A different type of packaging for similar but different gifts.
The differences that stood out the most to me had nothing to do with the cultural swaps, but with how the movies were trying to make the audience feel. While both films are categorized on wikipedia as “comedy-drama”, Tortilla Soup seems to put more emphasis on the “comedy” part of the equation than its original. The sisters laugh with each other, arguments are lightened by the slight hammy-ness of the characters and their actors, and the ending features a big meal shared with the whole cast, as opposed to Eat Drink Man Woman’s much more quiet and plaintive ending with a meal shared by the middle daughter and her father.
While normally I would enjoy a lighter, more comedic telling most of the time, I have to say that once I watched the original, the re-make seemed hollow. Eat Drink Man Woman is exactly 20 minutes longer in its run-time than its counterpart, and those 20 minutes are put to good use helping develop and help the audience understand the characters in the story. The same characters as in Tortilla Soup, but their stories and interactions and emotions just feel so much more three-dimensional in the original. After watching Tortilla Soup, I admit I had enjoyed it, but I was a bit lost on what message it was trying to send. What did all of the romances have to do with each other? What was the purpose of a father’s co-worker, or an ex-boyfriend, or an undercurrent of romantic interest with a business partner? Most importantly, what does food represent in the story? It’s a place where the family gathers, and where announcements are made, but what else?
In Eat Drink Man Woman, The meaning of food is clear enough that It’s even explained in the dialogue of the main characters. Food is how they communicate. That’s the thread that connects all the romances together. The frustrations within the family are there because they won’t tell each other how they feel. The emphasis of communication in romantic relationships in particular is emphasized multiple times. Food is the silent way that the characters communicate with each other, and at the same time, family dinner is the one place where people are willing to speak the unspoken. This theme, which had eluded me in the re-make, was clear in the original. Food and cooking is one of the many ways that people can communicate with each other. The film’s together show just how universal this idea can be.
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