Heavy Craving is a 2019 drama about a woman who strikes up eclectic friendships with a deliveryman and a cross-dressing student.
Jiang Ying-Juan (Jia-Yin Tsai) is fat. It defines her, at least from everyone who sees her. At the store. On the streets. At the park. On the bus. Even at work, where she is the cook at her mother’s (Samantha Shu-Chin Ko) school (though she’s not allowed to plan the menu), the children call her Ms. Dinosaur. She is numbed by the bullying and hides behind her passion for her cooking, making extravagant meals her mom won’t eat. At last, Ying-Juan agrees to try a new weight loss program, maybe thinking it can change her life, but the tactics are aggressive, the methods intense, and as she loses weight, her health deteriorates … and so does her love of cooking. Is it worth it?
You think you know everything about Ying-Juan the moment you see her, a ploy the filmmakers are counting on in setting up built-in societal expectations. She is in a grocery story at the checkout, her cart stuffed with pudding packs, so much so that the shelves are empty. People look at her, as do we, with a judgmental eye, simply because she is greatly overweight – the pudding is hers; she’s fat; she’s out of control. It’s only a bit later when you learn why she’s bought the food that it becomes more clear and this is just one of a few smart hooks in writer and director Pei-Ju Hsieh‘s artful examination of a young woman who knows what she is, happy enough to make her own choices, and just wants to do her thing.
Heavy Craving is a Taiwanese film, Ju Hsieh’s feature length directorial debut, and tackles not just obesity in telling Ying-Juan’s troubling tale, but much more of course, including the outrageous pressures society imposes on those just outside the ‘accepted’ norms. It’s not new, but Ju Hsieh has found an admirable character in the warm-hearted Ying-Juan, who is soon met with two other important people in her life, that of an upbeat delivery man named Wu (Yao-Jen Chang), who takes to defending her at a crucial moment (he hiding his own demons), and a young boy who likes to wear girls clothes, a secret she discovers by accident.
As you suspect, this is a journey of self discovery with a few lashes taken out on the public for its cruelty, condemning people for their differences. It doesn’t stray too far off the path in getting us there but is nonetheless affecting given how well Jia-Yin Tsai so effortlessly invites us into both her joys and depressions. It’s a terrific, inspiring performance. Ju Hsieh wisely doesn’t prop her up as a caricature or put her in obvious compromises that would further make her an easy target, careful to always make the pain she feels earned. As such, this isn’t a light experience, with Ying-Juan facing some real trauma, the film not walking tenderly on some genuinely rough personal issues.
For that, Heavy Craving can be a poignant story, and while the message at its heart is deeply sincere, it’s probably unfortunate it won’t have the impact it should, which is sort of the point I suppose Ju Hsieh is making, even if the movie steers towards a more brighter end. The line between being healthy and maintaining a certain accepted public appearance is thin and it’s movies like this that remind us just how fragile it is. Recommended.
Heavy Craving is currently screening at the Taiwan biennial film festival presented by Taiwan academy & The UCLA Film & television archive.