Lights, Camera, Action! It’s Time to Eat!
make our culture. Based on a Karen Blixen tale, the film is focused on the Babette character, angel of good cooking with a revolutionary past, the movie reaches its maximum expression in the lunch moment when there is a parade of grand courses and vintage wines. This scene makes not only the spectator’s mouth water, but also it leads him to a philosophic consideration about life and the pleasure to live it with taste. Family relationships and food are the leitmotiv in Eat, Drink, Man, Woman by the director Ang Lee.
The chef Ipei Chu keeps cooking while the camera shows what is happening in his family. The cookery tradition is the bridge between the different generations; at the table the family shares food and feelings. In Chocolat (2000) the food is the metaphor of a fight of wider significance. Vianne, Juliette Binoche, a single mother of a daughter, goes to live in a small French village and opens, during the Lent period, a chocolate shop. The chocolate symbolizes both temptation and a way to break 61