Heavy Craving

Film description

Ying-juan is an extraordinary chef, but due to her overweight she constantly meets rejection and criticism from a society that only accepts slim and young bodies. She works as a cook in a kindergarten run by her demanding mother, who embodies the dietary rigor and pursuit of the ideal of beauty. She forces her daughter to enroll in a popular weight loss programme in exchange for Ying-juan being able to decide on the kindergarten lunch menu herself. The young woman starts fight with her own body. However along the way she will encounter true friends and comradades in an uneven battle against oneself...

In her full-length debut, the Taiwanese director Hsieh Pei-ju uses genre conventions and a classic narrative model to reflect on eating disorders, which is one of the most serious problems of the modern society that affects almost all of us. The sunny colour tone of the  film frames collides with the dark fairytale about loneliness in society, which pushes all non-normative people to self-destruction. In "Heavy Craving", the heroine is confronted with her demons, embodied in aggressively optimistic, forever smiling flawless ideal of beauty. Honest, humorous script written by Hsieh Pei-ju and Tsai Jia-yin's brilliant acting are undeniable strengths of the film, which won the audience award at this year's Taipei Film Festival.

Maja Korbecka