..:: Pieces of Mandy ::..

Last night I stayed up until 3AM watching a movie called Eat Drink Man Woman - about a Chinese chef with three daughters. The eldest - in which they called an old maid - was a chemistry teacher at an all-boys school. The middle - is an executive at a airline company and is hugely successful. The youngest - still in school and works at a local fast food restaurant. Four very different characters brought together in this house...where the father demands that everyone gathers for Sunday dinners.

The most interesting story line for me was the one between the father and the middle child. She was the most independent of her family, wanting to move out immediately because of the lack of privacy that she encounters. Her older sister has become the mother since the mother passed away and she feels almost stuck in this old house with her father. So she takes her savings and puts a down payment on a new high-rise apparently in the downtown area. Her sisters are bitter about her leaving. She is single but is still hanging around her ex-boyfriend for booty calls. So anyway.. she and her father do not get along and is the last one they expect to stay back and take care of him in his old age.

The father is a reknown chef that has lost his tastebuds. He can no longer taste any of the food that he makes. He finds comfort in talking with his friend at the restaurant who still calls him to do favours during large banquet parties.

Anywho...the middle daughter sees her father at the hospital one day while visiting a friend and although he doesn't see her, she realizes that he has come out from the cardiovascular department and she thinks that she now knows his secret. she doesn't tell her father that she knows.. in fact, she doesn't even tell her other sisters. At the same time, her work has offered her a VP position at their new airline in Amsterdam. So here comes the conflict...what is more important to her? The promotion... or her father's health. While all of this is happening, the eldest runs off and gets married to the gym coach and the younger gets pregnant with her new bf and moves out.

It's a movie about familial values. It forced the middle child to evaluate her life and her priorities. She turned down the promotion and stayed with her father.... only to find out that he wasn't sick after all!!! That he was merely going for his yearly check-up...and that he had fallen in love again..with the neighbour who is the same age as his oldest daughter! goes to show.. also...sometimes things aren't always as they seem. But it made her realize that this entire time she was worried about herself and her career...she had lost sight of what was really important to her.. and this assumption had made it all clear again.

It was really a great movie...made me think a lot about my own family situation. I know I would not hesitate to take care of my parents when they are older ... the question is: Would they want ME to take care of THEM?