As a housewife, Ina wants to use a well-cooked lunch to bring her increasingly estranged husband back to her side. She firmly believes in that sentence, if you want to win the heart of a man, you must first win his stomach. After her husband went to work, Ina started cooking, and lunch was delivered through a special delivery agency similar to a courier company. But from this day on, the system of the food delivery company went wrong, and the lunch made by Ina was delivered to another man's desk. Fernandez has worked in this accounting firm for 35 years. He has worked hard and has never made any mistakes. He will retire in a month. He lost his wife and no children, and lived a lonely and boring life. Every day lunch is booked from a takeaway shop. On this day, the delicacy of this misdelivered lunch made him feel good. The empty lunch box was returned to Ina's house. Ina thought it was her husband's praise to her. But at night I learned that the husband’s lunch was swapped with another person’s lunch. She didn't say anything, but put a note in the lunch box the next day, stating the situation. After seeing it, Fernandes not only ate up lunch again, but also wrote back a letter to Ina. In this way, the two began to communicate. In a certain ambiguous mood, Ina changed a trick to cook lunch. With this lunch box, the two told about their living conditions, their hobbies, their confusion about life, and their expectations for the future. Until one day, they decided to meet. But Fernandis flinched...
As a director's debut work, "Lunch Box" can be regarded as excellent enough. It has not been contaminated with a trace of Hollywood's commercial atmosphere that deliberately creates selling points, nor has it deliberately advertised itself as a literary and artistic film with partial and extreme themes. At the same time, it has completely eliminated the abrupt and inexplicable song and dance fragments in Indian movies. The film uses a gentle and poetic lens to describe the face of Indian society, people's lives and hearts, but it has a clear international vision. It is by no means a boring film, but it is never boisterous, full of delicate details and metaphors. The hope and love revealed by Ina when she fiddled with the food, and Fernandis's satisfaction and steadfastness when dining, all exude an extraordinary taste through the food. Ina’s neighbor aunt upstairs has been acting as her mentor, instructing her in cooking and instructing her on how to get along with others. But the aunt never showed up. The two communicated only through shouting voices. She was like a "god", hanging on a high place, but invisible.
Although "Lunch Box" took place in India, it is a story of universal significance. It does not deliberately emphasize the exoticism or show the unbearable bottom of the class, but it is actually about the inside and outside of a middle-class family. This kind of story is the easiest to tell boring, not to mention that it is narrated through a common medium such as one meal and one meal. But "Lunch Box" shakes out many unspeakable emotions from the food. For example, indifference and estrangement in marriage, people's demand for love, resistance to loneliness, yearning for a new life, and the fear of change that follows. In every lunch, people’s complex emotions are contained in the lunch box, and the relationship between wanting to talk and rest is ambiguous. In another sense, the homely taste and thoughts in this lunch have become a real comfort in this virtual age. People's loneliness, desire, courage and timidity are all inspired and comforted by the warm and delicious lunch.
Eating and sex are actually difficult themes to deal with in movies. Compared with the topical "sex", "eating" is actually more difficult to control. It is rare to see a director who can interpret this theme in place. In China, a country that talks about "tips of the tongue" every day, besides a "Shuang Shi Ji", what other movie of this kind can you remember? Food is so important, it is the basis of all desires, but it seems to have been awkwardly absent in decent movies. "Lunch Box" is really a rare work. It uses a dramatic misplacement to elicit a sorrowful story, and uses food to entrust melancholy and long emotions.
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