THE CHINESE FEAST Asia

No figure within the Hong Kong New
Wave has been more influential than Tsui
Hark-director of Peking Opera Blues and
the best of the Once Upon a Time in China
series, and a producer of John Woo’s The
Killer and the Chinese Ghost Story and
Swordsman series. A dazzling stylist, Tsui
continually reinvents himself, often pulling
the rest of Hong Kong after him. The
premise of his 1995 The Chinese Feast is
wonderfully clever: it applies the form of a
classic martial arts film to a story about
cooking. Leslie Cheung plays an inept
young cook who must find a master chef to
represent his boss’s restaurant in a highstakes
competition. Despite its loosely
structured, anything goes plot, the knockout
humor and high spirits of The Chinese
Feast manage to keep us enthralled
through detailed demonstrations of complex
(and often revolting) recipes. -Andy
Klein, New Times LA. The Chinese Feast is
Andy Klein’s Critic’s Choice