Date: 1995
Region: Hong Kong, China
Cast
Director: Tsui Hark
Cinematography: Bao Dexi
Cast: Leslie Cheung, Elaine Yuen, Chiu Man-chiu, Law Kar-ying, Chung Chun-tao, Fan Yi-min, Xiong Xinxin, Ngai Suk-kwan
Synopsis
"Full House", also known as "Golden Jade Full House", is a fun New Year's Eve comedy from Tsui Hark. Full House", also known as "Golden Jade", is a fun New Year's comedy by Tsui Hark in 1995. The movie is about a cooking competition, but it is shot in the style of a martial arts movie: first there is a challenge, and then there is hard practice, full of equal and dazzling cooking styles and winning moves.
The look of the film is so good that in the prologue, Tsui Hark uses an elevated platform to let the camera glide over the colorful and flavorful dishes from directly above (the best angle for viewing), whetting the audience's appetite. This prologue section of the dishes in front of the Diaoyutai Hotel in Beijing, a stop shot, the termination of the shot is very commendable, first, the composition of the characters cleverly visualized into the food (the center of the round flowers become the main dish, the surrounding characters, the car to form the embellishments.) The second is the very natural transition from the prologue's cuisine shots to the story - the Chinese Cuisine Competition finals in the Diaoyutai Hotel.
The use of the competition as the film's opening sequence makes for a small climax in the opening scene (and the film's subsequent climaxes). The finalists, Liao Jie (Chung Chun-Tao) and Long Kun-Bao (Chiu Man-Cheuk), live up to the hype and show off their culinary skills, with their respective creations - the Crystal Great Wall and tofu carvings - being crystal clear and breathtakingly beautiful. But Liao Jie has other things on his mind, as Tsui Hark parallel edits the footage of his wife (Ngai Suk Kwan) being taken to the hospital to give birth. Because of his wife's concern, Liao Jie eventually abandons the competition in the third round of the Yellow Fish vs. Sea Dragon competition and rushes home, but the baby is already gone and his wife chooses to leave because Liao Jie is usually too focused on his cooking skills and wants to find a life of her own.
Then the camera pans to a chef's exam five years later. The male number one, Sheng (a triad boss, played by Leslie Cheung), appeared on the scene, waved a big knife to do steak, and did a very bad job, and then used smoke bombs to do the trick, and after winning the prize, he was very exaggeratedly excited and jumped up and down, and the body was prepared for the cheating material fell down, which is a kind of punk look, and not like a triad boss at all.
After that, Long Kun Bao met Ah Sheng by chance, and heard that he wanted to learn cooking, so he introduced him to learn the art of Man Han House. Sheng goes there, but he doesn't realize that the owner of the restaurant, Fung (Law Ka Ying), has a grudge against Lung, so the audience is in for a treat.
The suspense in the movie always seems to end in hilarious hijinks, whether it's when Fung makes life difficult for Sheng's side dishes or when he kills a big fish. When Ah Sang fails to prepare a dish, he knocks over all the plates on the table, but then pats his butt and says, "I'm going to the toilet. At this point, the female lead Ka Wai (Fung's daughter, played by Anita Yuen) appears and plays a common Hong Kong movie vulgar style: from the side of the urinal where Ah Sang is taking a leak, then shakes hands with Ah Sang, who reaches out his hand, but Ka Wai says the other hand, because it is the hand in which Ah Sang has just taken a leak. Subsequently, the big fish fight also let Ah Sheng unintentionally take advantage of Jia Hui, the two began to spark ......
The film's mirror narrative natural and smooth, between the play and the play, the scene between the articulation skillfully.
For example, Sheng has just settled his loan-sharking affairs with his buddies in a karaoke bar, when the camera pans to reveal a beautiful woman (the girlfriend of another gangster) looking wistfully (or very wistfully) toward Sheng. Ah Sang coolly bites a cigarette, then lights it and strikes a cool pose, his eyes are mesmerized and he seems to be trying to discharge electricity. Suddenly the music starts and the camera gradually moves towards the distance, it turns out that Ka Wai is posing with her back in an even cooler pose on the stage over there, a very clever articulation. Then Ka Wai turns back to the stage with exaggerated make-up and sings "Carmen". Tsui Hark mixes accordion, harp and rattles, turning "Carmen" into a crazy piece with all kinds of music, and Ah Sang looks dumbfounded. Cigarettes fall to the ground, and it turns out that Ka Wai's singing is so bad that the crowd starts to vomit. Then, Yan girl on stage, with which to compete, the two women began to grab the microphone, the field is the two major gangster groups, another good show opened ......
Finally a finally, the villain Huang Rong appeared (Xiong Xinxin played), this person ambitious, trying to annex the full Hong Kong restaurant. He comes down to the Full House to declare war, using the Full House as the stake to compete with Fung in the cooking of the Full House. Fung agrees to do so at the urging of his men, and later promises to give his staff a pay rise in order to win over Wong Wing. However, the staff resigns just after the pay rise, as they have been bribed by Wong Wing. Fung suffers a stroke.
At the moment of crisis, Ka Wai and Ah Sang take up the task of saving the city, but both of them are cooks. Ah Sang remembers Lung Kwan Po, who tells them about the legend of "Full House", but Lung doesn't know how to make a full house, he knows that Liao Jie does, so all of them traveled to Guangzhou to invite Liao Jie.
At last, they find Liao Jie, and all the restaurant owners come to welcome him. Liao Jie show cooking skills to make his specialty, the last unfinished soup yellowtail, really let the crowd eye-opening, but a chef tasted the flavor is not right, it turned out that Liao Jie due to marital disillusionment, the two years of self-loathing, alcoholism and binge drinking, and is now slow to the taste of the five flavors, made the yellowtail salty, astringent, and fishy. The chefs have to leave, Tsui Hark still with an overhead shot, and with a jump to show the original reunion at the table of the people instantly wind up in the air. This is in stark contrast to the welcome from the front. The crowd is once again in a quandary.
To make Liao Jie regain his sense of taste, Tsui Hark again made a lot of laughs, not only by bringing in the treasures of traditional Chinese medicine - acupuncture, health dance, and the usual farting. In the end, his sense of taste is restored, and the final Manchu banquet competition is a climax, so I won't go into details here.
It should be said that the movie's plot arrangement is very clever, although the main body is the battle with Huang Rong, but the front with a long time to do the padding, Liao Jie is in the opening paragraph after a long time does not appear, give a person a kind of suspense. Many episodes of the movie have padding, for example, the movie in the opening of the competition has hinted at Liao Jie's tofu carving skills, for the final battle of the tofu monkey brain to do the ambush, but also formed a kind of echo. For example, the test between Sheng and Jiahui to determine whether Liao Jie is the person they are looking for (both parties do not know each other and only have photos) has already implied that Liao Jie has lost his sense of taste.
The characterization isn't bad, either. When Ka Wai learns that Ah Sang likes Yamaguchi Baihui, she fantasizes about him sailing away, and she sends him off in tears, in a scene that reads like a Puccini opera, which is very funny. The opening scene is a weird punk look (to piss off his father), and the final scene is a woodpecker feathered crown (because he just took off his chef's hat), and the final scene when Ah Sang comes back and the two of them are reunited is very memorable, Ka Wai jumps on Ah Sang, and then checks Ah Sang's wallet to see if he has a picture of her, and the hairstyle is still high, which makes people laugh.