This is more or less a standard story on how a woman come to term with his father, who has form families with two other women. This let me think of Little big women, depicting the the meeting of the original and second wife upon the funeral of the husband. The latter is more attractive me. It may be because o the Taiwan custom which is newer to me,or for some other reasons that is unexplainable. Or I simply like female director.

The present movie is slow and dull. It always show scenes that how the father love his restaurant workers, how he helps Sammy Cheng with the school dictation, how he follow the match of his Taiwan daughter. All are praising his dad. I just cannot figure out how Sammy could forgive his father with this little trivial things. His dad is really a Xxxx that cannot be forgiven.

This is a story about coping with hurt, of dealing with relationships and about self-healing.

The main storyline talks about a father with three daughters, each with different mothers and lives separately in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. The eldest sister, Acacia (played by Sammi Cheng),lives in Hong Kong and is struggling to start her own life after breaking up with her ex-fiance. She found out about the other two sisters after her father's death, and have struggled with running her father's hotpot shop. Her storyline explore how one should deal with hurting moments in the past. Through taking over her father's hotpot shop and building a relationship with her two sisters, she is able to self-recover and reconcile with herself. The last scene where she shouts to her deceased father is especially heartbreaking. Through her journey of exploring the differences between the two generations, as well as to understand her father, she was able to cope with her past hatred of her father, and recover from the sudden loss of her father.

The second eldest sister, Branch (played by Megan Lai),is a professional pool player struggling to make a living, and not knowing how to get along with her mother. She is a determined and freedom-loving individual living in Taiwan, but she always felt her efforts in playing pool is not appreciated by her mother.

The youngest sister, Cherry (played by Li Xiaofeng) is a fashion streamer living in China. Having been abandoned by both her father and mother, she lives with her grandmother who always urge her to get married. Her storyline deals with the perplexion of facing an unknown future.

From the director's sharing, the three sisters each represent facing the past, the present, and the future. They are also born in 70s, 80s and 90s respectively.

The time they spent living together and running the hotpot shop, is a like a shelter where they can pull away from their problems, be a better self and return back to their lives respectively.

Few lines that resonate deeply with Hong Kong viewers, is when Blanche got drunk and says, "If I worked really hard, but I still can't win, what should I do? If we work really hard, but the world still does not get any better, what should we do?" (widespread due to a trailer for Hong Kong Film Awards). Another line is "If you have worked hard before in your life, you will not say it does not matter."

As an individual facing such a cruel and unjust world, perhaps as the director shared, we should our best not to become an evil person. We may need time to heal from the deep trauma and wound in our society, but we will endure this and rise up again stronger than before.

This film was released at the worst of times, but also at the best of times.

'Fagara' would've been stronger without the occasional over-acting but it pulled heartstrings and delivered smiles the way a melodrama should.

Three adult sisters with a father in common, two from Taiwan and one from Hong Kong, get to know each other when he dies.

Because the colour of warmth is food, the setting is his small restaurant that's famous for a hotpot soup whose recipe they can't quite figure out.

My biggest takeaway is thousands of years of Asian culture outpaces anything my South Africa has to offer. I'm damn hungry now. I'm literally salivating as I think of those bubbling frying pans on the customers tables. I've conveniently excluded the fact that all those spices in a small room would unite with my asthma to kill me. I'll give my life for a happy tongue. I'll get famous as the Kamikaze Tummy.