Soul Food

A family film set in Chicago. For forty years the same table has been set every Sunday. The grandmother cooks, her three daughters and their families come, and the evening ends at dinner. The three sisters are very different. Teri is a lawyer; she earns, she covers the family's debts and she makes everyone feel it. Maxine chose a household and there is an old matter between her and her sister. Bird has opened a hairdressing salon and is newly married. The narrative runs through the eyes of the youngest grandchild. The grandmother falls ill. Her diabetes advances, surgery is needed and she is bedridden. From there the film is about the table breaking up. The Sunday dinners stop; the sisters do not visit, the money question grows, an old secret comes out and the house comes close to being sold. What the narrative is interested in is not food but ritual: what holds this family together is not feeling but a repeated habit, and when the habit stops everyone pulls to their own side. The cooking is the film's texture; plates, the kitchen and preparation are held long. Vanessa Williams, Vivica A. Fox, Nia Long, Michael Beach, Mekhi Phifer and Irma P. Hall are in the cast. George Tillman Jr. wrote and directed; the story comes from his own family. The music was produced by Kenneth Edmonds and the album became well known apart from the film. Who it is for: anyone who likes family drama and American black cinema of the 1990s. Who it is not for: anyone looking for restraint; the film leans openly on melodrama and every knot unties at once in the last section.