I once again let YT recommendations choose what to watch and this week as soon as I opened my YT app, 紫禁城里的小食光 is the first video I saw and since I like food-themed shows, I watched it and the opening scene of chefs cooking fish made me decide to watch until the end although honestly the movie's story is a big bore although the food featured throughout seemed delicious.
The movie tells the story of a royal chef 张东官who through flashbacks we learn used to be a commoner who strove hard to get in the royal kitchens just so he could see his former sweetheart who became a princess. The princess 景娴格格 luckily is married to a general 长叙 who agrees to their arrangement of being husband-and-wife in name only. The princess meets her former lover again and is baffled why the latter is always evading her. Now there is another princess 婉贞格格 who is very naive and who likes to eat. She has a huge crush on a prince and wants to slim down. In order to please her, she is fooled into thinking that the more she eats the more she loses weight. 景娴格格 discovers the trickery and 婉贞格格 is tricked into doing many activities like kite-flying and tug-of-war so she can indeed lose weight. After some time, she slims down but discovers through an army trainer who is her friend and who likes her that the prince she likes likes her only for her status and will use her to gain power. She eventually realizes that the army trainer is the one who cares for her sincerely and when she is with him she can be herself.
The movie covers other storylines as well such as how a maid named 敏慧 is implicated in a crime about stealing the empress' treasures. Later on it is revealed that the empress is always short of money and the maid is used as a pawn to be able to smuggle the treasure out in exchange for cash. 景娴格格 visits the place she and 东官 used to hang out and learns that 东官 does not want to alter anything in the place. Eventually the two becomes close again until the princess sees her husband who is thought of as having died in battle. 长叙 and 东官 meet and negotiate to complete a mission. It turns out that 长叙 's beloved 紫鹃 is the one killed in battle and not him. She has taken his place when he was heavily injured and unconscious. After that, he told the rest of the army to inform the palace of his death or else he will commit suicide. He wants 东官 to steal the weapon plans kept in the palace to destroy it and not cause any more human destruction in fulfillment of 紫鹃's will. 景娴格格 and 东官 enlist the help of their friends but they are caught. It is revealed why they did such things and the emperor forgives everyone and the two lovers can now be together with the emperor's permission because as he says, this kind of true love is very rare inside the palace.
It's a very simple story actually with not much room for character development and further struggles. It's like everything is resolved because of the generosity and benevolence of the rulers who "understand" why the people act and behave in such way. In reality though, you can never trick a Chinese emperor without being punished heavily or without being put to death since the emperor loses face. Even 还珠格格 and company were thrown into prison and were supposed to be executed had not the princes decided to take them away to safety. And the title itself is very misleading because there is not much food shown in the movie although at the latter part the iced dessert 冰碗莲子羹 is served to the emperor so that the moisture will wet the pages of the book and will be taken away. Through this, 张东官 intercepts the official and obtains the book. It is a case of perfect timing because the emperor needs to read the right book when the dessert is served. The movie could have used much more clever tricks and more mind-boggling stuff for that wow moment as I sometimes encounter in some Chinese drama series. Also, I don't see how the different subplots cohere. It's like some are just fillers which can be developed into another film on its own. The same with 敏慧's case which is very characteristic of the palace's political intrigues.
No comments:
Post a Comment