Produced by Jaglom's own Jagfilms, the film is typical of the director's own personal style - half-scripted, half-improvised - and his obvious love for women. Eating revolves around Helene's (Richards) 40th birthday party, in which two other women are having milestone birthdays - 30 and 50. Although a laboriously made cake is brought out during the celebration, most of the women refuse to eat it, at least in public. This puzzles French filmmaker Martine (Alard), and so she decides to interview the guests.
Various neuroses arise - one woman doesn't want to have sex after eating because it makes her feel fat, others hide in the bathroom to eat dessert, some criticize their friends' perceived flaws and are jealous of others' happiness. As Helene's mother, the voice of reason in the sea of neuroses and backbiting comments, Henry Jaglom cast Frances Bergen, the widow of Edgar, and mother of Candice. Bergen had appeared in films like Titantic (1953), American Gigolo (1980) and The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), and on television shows like Murder She Wrote as well as her daughter's hit, Murphy Brown, but her career as an actress and singer had been largely sacrificed to please her husband, and overshadowed by him and her daughter. Her role in Eating gave her a chance to shine and the critics noticed. Frances Bergen later said, "This whole thing has been such a high. Maybe I've finally proven to people that I can deliver on my own."
Jaglom had been a long-time friend of Candice Bergen's, but was hesitant about asking her mother to take the role of Whitney, because he knew Frances Bergen was used to a more formal film atmosphere, rather than his improvisational style. However, he found that she took to it immediately, saying, "She is so charming and so elegant, yet so witty and open to what is happening around her." Bergen was delighted to have the chance to sing The Way You Look Tonight, which had been introduced by Fred Astaire in Swing Time (1936). According to Henry Jaglom, audiences were so moved by her singing that they applauded in the theaters.
Eating earned a nomination for the Critics Award at the Deauville Film Festival in 1990, although it left the critics mixed, as Jaglom's films often do. The New York Times' Janet Maslin wrote that "Food assumes near-religious importance in Mr. Jaglom's portrait of needy, anxious women who spend an entire day playing upon one another's insecurities, and waxing rhapsodic about well-remembered culinary thrills. That perfect bodies are irreconcilable with cream puffs becomes a source of genuine and amusingly well-expressed regret. [...] Mr. Jaglom's attitude toward his film's dizzying array of narcissists is extremely fond, which is a lot of what gives Eating its warmth and humor. Seen through a colder eye, the film's characters would quickly become insufferable."
By Lorraine LoBianco
SOURCES:
Erickson, Hal "Eating," Rovi
http://www.henryjaglom.com/rainbowfilms/jaglom.html
The Internet Movie Database
Maslin, Janet "'Eating' Review/Film; Of Gorging and Gossiping Where God Is Food" The New York Times 3 May 91
http://rainbowfilmstore.com/about.html
Weinstein, Steve "For Frances Bergen, the Taste of Success: Movies: Edgar's widow and Candice's mother gets her own sweet revenge in 'Eating,' Henry Jaglom's new film." The Los Angeles Times 22 Nov 90
