The Chinese film Eat Drink Man Woman is about a semi-retired professional chef with three adult daughters, and every Sunday he enforces a dinner so that they may all spend time together. The American remake Tortilla Soup focuses on the same family dynamics, except the family is Latino instead of Chinese.
The opening sequences in both movies have a lot of similarities. It starts with shots of the father cooking food in preparation for the dinner and then shows daughters living their lives. The ending also has plenty of similarities plot wise. They still have a family dinner, the young girl being pregnant, and the middle child decides not to go abroad. There are also plenty of differences in the opening and ending scenes. A difference is that in the establishing shot in Eat Drink Man Woman lets us know where we are, it is easy to see that the setting is Chinese, but in Tortilla Soup it could be anywhere and we do not know until 30 seconds into the film. A difference in the ending is that in Eat Drink Man Woman the ending seems more negative, the family doesn’t like the marriage or the pregnancy. In Tortilla Soup it is no big deal, and people are happy for them. Also, there is an extra scene in Tortilla Soup of everyone together showing that everything is fine, this is not in Eat Drink Man Woman.
The characters and their motivations are very similar in both films. The youngest daughters both move in with their boyfriends, the only difference being that in Tortilla Soup she wants to drop out of college. The middle daughters both work in business but want to be chefs and decide to quit to open a restaurant, however in Eat Drink Man Woman it is less obvious that this is what she is going to do. The eldest daughters both find love and elope with a coworker. The fathers are the same as well, the only difference being that the father in Eat Drink Man Woman doesn’t want nearly as much control over his daughters as the father in Tortilla Soup, he just wants to regain the spice in his life.
Some differences between Eat Drink Man Woman and Tortilla Soup are cultural, for example the foods they cook and how they cook them. In Eat Drink Man Woman there is a lot of steaming and frying, and the father cooks food such as tofu, peppers, rice, and Joy Luck Dragon Pheonix. In Tortilla Soup there is a lot of grilling, and the father in this movie cooks things such as cactus, bread pudding and stuffed cherry tomatoes.
Overall, the films are very similar and most of the plot remains the same. It is just a few cultural differences and character motivations that set them apart.
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