LAFF 2014: EAT WITH ME

in Eat with Me. 

Half-baked

By Ed Rampell

Eat With Me, which world premiered at the LA Film Festival, alternates between being an enjoyable, poignant coming out comedy drama and a paint -- or rather film -- by the numbers story. The plot of writer/director David Au’s feature-length directorial debut movie also has more holes in it than -- to use a culinary comparison -- Swiss cheese.

Elliot (the diffident Teddy Chen Culver) is a restaurateur of what is presumably a Chinese (like much else in this story, Au never specifies the ancestry of his Asian-American characters) eatery that is more or less a run of the mill dive in (presumably) a rather generic Downtown L.A. that could be the downtown of almost any urban American center. As the restaurant with its mediocre menu faces shuttering, after a falling out with her husband (over what, we’re never really quite sure) Elliot’s mother, Emma (the wonderful Sharon Omi), suddenly shows up out of nowhere and starts lodging at her son’s pad in (presumably) Downtown L.A.

Complications ensue, as Elliot’s homosexuality becomes an inescapable fact that Emma must contend with and face. She had more or less previously known of her son’s sexual orientation but preferred to ignore it. Eat With Me is most insightful when it shows how Elliot’s parents’ failure to communicate is passed down to him, resulting in his inability to form lasting relationships and his miscommunication with the sensitive musician, Ian (Aidan Bristow).

The various cooking sequences have that painting/filming by numbers quality: There is a food network, chefs are celebrities, Anthony Bourdain has replaced the news on CNN, so Au appears to be pandering to that coveted foodie demographic.

The strength of Eat With Me is its cast, led by the estimable Sharon. Oh my, Omi is stellar as a loving if traditional, conservative mom who struggles with her son’s “deviance” off the beaten sexual path and with her deep maternal instincts, which she expresses by cleaning his loft and by, but of course, cooking for the son she is desperately trying to reach to and connect with. Previously, Omi has mostly been confined to small big and little screen roles but here this gifted artist is allowed to shine in a lead role, and we are all the better for it.