Filmmaker David Au’s debut feature film about an unhappy Chinese-American mother and her strained relationship with equally miserable son is as melodramatic as if it were an Asian type novella. Emma the mother sticks with her boring husband who completely neglects her until he wakes up in the middle of the night and insists on cutting his wedding ring off. She soon hot tails it out of there and ends up uninvited on the doorstep on her son Elliot’s apartment. Gloomy Elliot is more than a bit of a drama queen and is currently doing a bad job of running the family restaurant he inherited from his uncle, and also having the odd quick fling with a hot hunk whenever he feels the urge.
Mother and son seem like total strangers with each other and one of the many things they have never discussed is the fact that Elliot is gay. He has kept this news from her partly because he doesn’t seem to happy about it himself, and he has never ever had anything approaching an actual relationship with a man. Meanwhile Maureen his livewire neighbor takes Emma under her wing and manages to get this very uptight woman to open up enabling her to be positive about the possibility of mending her relationship with both her son and her husband.
It’s a well-meaning wee movie but is stifled by a rather painful script and a plot line that one can easily predict within the first 10 minutes of the film. Bad writing also means some very wooden performances, most of which consisted of some long anguished looking faces. Even poor guest star George Takei playing himself look mightily uncomfortable trying to convince a skeptical Emma that being a Gay Chinese/American isn’t really the end of the world.The link that is meant to bring mother and son together is food, but even that appears so bland that it seems impossible to believe that its appetizing enough to really fix their relationship, let alone pack their new rather grand restaurant.
Eat with Me? This is one meal that could really do with some flavoring and spice.
