Brillante Mendoza’s Feast, which was produced by a Hong Kong company, is one of his more conventional movies, and as such continuously perplexed me. Though it plays up the Philippine director’s normal strengths, it moves in a direction that I would never associate with him. It’s essentially about how a traffic accident affects two families, one very well-off, and the other poor. But it’s also about food and its preparation, and sometimes the two themes seem quite far apart from each other. I think Mendoza is more spiritual than I had previously thought, because the power of prayer and Biblical knowledge has a prominent position in the film’s dramatic development. I wasn’t expecting a tale of revenge or redemption, but I would never have predicted he’d make a movie that pities the rich.

The Tuazon family runs a successful restaurant and catering operation in a regional city, and as the movie opens, the son of the patriarch, Rafael (Coco Martin), is preparing for a big event, visiting markets and carefully selecting ingredients for the elaborate dishes that will be served at the feast. Driving home with his purchases, he’s distracted and collides with the three-wheeled vehicle of a man named Maitas (Carlos Canlas), who is seriously injured and eventually slips into a coma. Faced with impossible costs to keep Matias alive, his wife decides to pull the plug. As the investigation into the accident gears up, Rafael’s father, Alfredo (Lito Lapid), decides to take the blame in order to save his son’s future, more for the family than for Rafael. However, after Alfredo enters prison, the movie itself changes gears. The Tuazon family hires Matais’s family to work in their restaurant, and while at first it seems like an act of compensation, in the end the two families’ relative class distinctions are fortified rather than eliminated. The only real acknowledgement of the Tuazons’ culpability in Matias’s family’s situation is Rafael’s suffering, but it has more to do with his father’s sacrifice than the poorer family’s loss.

Mendoza has said in interviews that he shot an alternate ending that was much darker than the one in the released film. I’m not sure if that would have been a better movie, but I would definitely like to see it. As it stands, the latter third of Feast is mostly food porn–food porn of the highest quality, mind you, but food porn all the same.

In Filipino. Opens March 1 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551), Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho (03-6268-0015), Cinemart Shinjuku (03-5369-2831).

Feast home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 Hong Kong Pictures Heaven Culture & Media Company Limited