‘Eat Drink Man Woman’

Filled with so many spectacular Chinese dishes it reduces “Like Water for Chocolate” to a Pritikin Diet promotion, this 1994 romantic comedy about those unavoidable human desires--food and sex--looks tasty enough to incite a monk to abandon the simple life. From director Ang Lee (who co-wrote with Hui-Ling Wang and James Schmaus), “Eat Drink” offers a look at the intertwined lives of a traditionalist chef (Sihung Lung, feeding an elder chef played by Jui Wang) and his three live-at-home daughters. Funny, emotional and compassionate toward the human comedy, this is an intimate film that trusts us not to get impatient. It is a strikingly confident film for only a third feature; Ang Lee’s newest is to the just-released “Sense and Sensibility” (Cinemax Wednesday at 8 p.m.).