Feature Films Review
by Lulu Liu
This review is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative IV, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 26th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA.
As an Audience Member…
It’s been a delight to see the recent rise in Asian diasporic stories in films. At first, I was absolutely thrilled! Yes, representation! Stories about being torn between two worlds! The struggles of immigration! These narratives felt totally relatable to what my family and I have gone through, and to tell that narrative in a medium I love, validated that experience even more. But as time went on, the excitement I’d felt when I’d come across a poster about some new Asian diasporic movie began to dwindle, cast with some deja vu that I’d likely seen this same film before. The genre of diasporic films has, to me, landed itself into a certain cliché.
It’s hard to put a finger on it exactly, but here are some ideas. These films often have:
- A basis on the filmmaker’s own personal diasporic experience, and they often present hardships through the eyes of a familiar or self-resembling protagonist
- Dramatic and tense undertones due to the weight of distanced and/or strained relationships
- Long, still shots of characters sitting in silence
- The “home” acts as the source of tension, where family members coincide– portrayed as confined and dark framing and/or spaces.
- A muted visual colour palette
- Typical 3-act structure with Act II ending with some breakthrough crying/argument/tragic scene to ultimately relieve said tension, resulting in a cathartic and healing Act III.
- Topics such as, the split between two worlds, inherited generational trauma, reconciling the past and present, struggling in the new world
- Characters who may include:
- A protagonist withheld by family burdens and disapproval
- The parent who has fought/is fighting through the struggle of immigration and doesn’t understand their child
Essence of Monotony
Recent films I believe fit this formula include THE FAREWELL, QUICKENING, RICEBOY SLEEPS and MINARI. Let’s start by applying this formula to these films. Note: If you see any numbers in curly braces (e.g. {1}) refer to the points in the aforementioned formula.
THE FAREWELL
The film (based on director Lulu Wang’s own experience {1}) follows a young Chinese-American, Billi, at odds with her family’s decision to conceal their grandmother’s illness from her, a clash between the collectivism of the East against the individualism of the West {5,6}. This tension is ultimately relieved when Billie breaks down in front of her mother, expressing the discomfort she has over the difficult truths the family withheld from her for the sake of (what they perceive as) her own benefit (e.g. Yeye’s death, moving to America) {4}. What results from this conversation presumes that her mother comes around to how Billi feels and why those decisions hurt her {4}.
Long pensive car shots around town with dramatic music {2a}(3}
Billi’s father and mother revealing the illness and the family plan {2b}
Uncle Haibin and Billi’s father contesting the importance of the lie at their hotel {2b}
MINARI
The story, based on director Lee Isaac Chung’s upbringing growing up on a farm in Arkansas {1}, follows a Korean-American couple Jacob and Monica pursuing the American dream with their two children, David and Anne. Monica’s mother, Soon-ja, comes to help watch after the kids as the couple struggle to make their living {5,6}, with Jacob attempting to start a trade with the crops borne from their new land. The family acclimates to the community slowly, sticking out like a sore thumb in places such as church and school. David takes to Soon-ja slowly with cute complaints like “grandma smells like Korea”, intimated by their generational and cultural differences {5}. Eventually, the couple is brought apart when Jacob puts his business before his family, amounting to a disagreement that would put separation on the table. Not long afterwards, a fire sets flame to the farm, burning all the produce Jacob had intended to sell for his new contract {4}. What remains for the family are the resilient minari plants Soon-ja had rooted by the water, symbolizing the rebirth and fresh start the family was looking for {4}.
Jacob taking a smoke break from a stressful day {2a}(3}
The mobile home is bright and lively with the kids and Soon-ja, but often made tense through Jacob and Monica’s frequent disagreements. (3}{2b}
RICEBOY SLEEPS
The film, which screened at the 26th Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival, is based on director Anthony Shim’s own childhood {5}, and tells the story of a single Korean immigrant mother, So-Young, raising her child, Dong-Hyun, in Vancouver, Canada. In Dong-Hyun’s childhood, it really feels like mother-son against the world. Acclimation is difficult, as So-Young fearlessly fends off racism both at her work and on behalf of Dong-Hyun at his school. Later in Dong-Hyun’s teens, teen angst (e.g. drugs, peer pressure, fighting for a sense of identity as a Korean-Canadian) grows as a point of contention between the two, wherein So-Young finds it difficult to reconcile such actions {6}. In particular, Dong-Hyun is frustrated at his mother’s unwillingness to share his father’s history. After a big fight at school and some life-changing news {4}, So-Young gives in and suggests a trip to South Korea for Dong-Hyun to learn his roots.
Interestingly enough, the ScreenDaily even remarked that the film “could almost be a companion piece to Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari.”
Long tracking shot of a tearful and overwhelmed Dong-Hyun. {2a}(3}
While the home space is not always a form of contention– at least not until Dong-Hyun is older, the ScreenDaily describes the home ambience as “Home is filled with muted shades of mustard and ochre. It is a little gloomy, a touch claustrophobic but that adds to the sense of a sanctuary from the outside world.”(3}{2b}
QUICKENING
The story follows Sheila, a Pakistani-Canadian who is nearing the end of her freshman year at university. She attempts to seek freedom from her parents by negotiating a multi-day trip with her friends–which causes conflict which causes conflict with her parents {6}. As the story moves along, she falls in love with a classmate to whom she loses her virginity. After he abruptly breaks up with her, she suspects she is pregnant. Sheila is then burdened with the guilt of how she will be perceived by others for her ‘disobedience’, especially by her parents {6}, in the context of her father’s recent job loss. This all leads up to Sheila breaking down and revealing her pregnancy with her family, who meet her in her distress, assuring her all is okay {4}.
One of many long, pensive shots of Sheila with dramatic music. Here, she stares begrudgingly at her asleep mother after an argument {2a}
The film is filled with slow meandering pans of the family home, creating a strained effect {2b}
Sheila approaches her fighting parents, hesitant to share with them her pregnancy {2b, 3}
Is the emergence of a trope always a bad thing? No, not necessarily..We, audience members, continue to enjoy them because they deliver a reliable product. And to a certain degree, that’s what they are—consumable products. Rom-coms for one, is that example: a genre of feel-good movies made without the intention for critical engagement, or to remark on any messaging for radical change. The monetary exchange between easy, feel-good, movies and capital is a formula Hollywood has perfected with a genre of this type and has been very successful in doing so.
While diasporic films can be packaged and sold like Haribo gummy bears, they cannot simply be consumed as such. This surge of Asian diasporic films responded to a long-standing issue over the lack of Asian representation in Western media, but this has left Asian-American and Asian Canadian filmmakers with the responsibility of representing these communities through their stories. If we continue with these repetitious, dramatic, personal narratives, what would that say about the state of our communities? What would that tell us about ourselves?
I worry that the popularity of this brand of Asian diasporic films will send out the subsequent messaging to the wider audience: 1) The diasporic experience is always deeply depressing and serious; 2) that the diasporic Asian is totalized by their traumatic, diasporic struggles. Both of these have the potential to further tokenize the Asian diasporic experience.
Both statements, I take issue with, because they simply aren’t true. I believe there is equally a lot of lightness and humour in stories of diaspora, there is also a lot of overcoming and achievements to be celebrated. Asians have more nuance to be defined by just that.
If I were to pick at it a little further, another fallibility of having this cliché is the lack of cinematic innovation, these films fail to bring any novelty to cinematic storytelling—whether that’s in narrative structure, character development or technical execution.
While the narrative’s structure, and predictable, depressing symptoms of diaspora once held a feeling of validation, they are increasingly inflected by a weird mix of annoyance I feel while being triggered by all that lived trauma. Watching conflicts over cultural differences between intergenerational parties feels so helpless because I know there’s never any real resolution besides just shoving things under the rug. Seeing the “smelly lunch” trope a billion times over feels more like a hand-wavy PSA signifier than an effort to deliver anything meaningful anymore. While these films purportedly expose the more private and nuanced diasporic symptoms of migrant life on the big screen in an effort to make it so that the community can feel seen, validated, and reconcile these struggles, little is actually being brought to the diasporic conversation, but to regurgitate the same stories over again.
As a filmmaker…
The diasporic experience is a deeply personal one for any individual involved, often bringing turbulence to questions of belonging and identity on the individual and familial level and is to be taken with seriousness by audience members. I know that the diasporic experience will inevitably emerge in some form for any diasporic Asian storyteller, but does it always need to take center stage and be told in such a serious and dramatic manner?
While writing this essay, I came across this Ted-Ed talk from Tina Yong, titled The Rise of the “Trauma Essay” in College Applications, where she brings up the use of “trauma-dumping” as a strategic means for immigrant students to make impressionable college application essays, highlighting the many college application guides, including the MIT admissions blog, suggesting to students that essays ridden with painful memories make for a “striking impression”, and make applicants come off as “humble, accessible, likable and mature”. She remarks this as an “overwhelming pressure being put on high school students to write about their deepest traumas in their college applications with the hopes they seem interesting and resilient enough to be given a spot”, which, despite its ethical dilemmas, (at least to those outside of the admissions office) appear to be working effectively in securing a spot in these schools.
There’s been a running joke between my Asian film-loving friends, that we all need to make one of these bleeding-heart films of our own in order to get a foot into the film industry. One by one, I find them working on some script on the matter. I always feel a little bit vexed when I hear of this, knowing that this is not what they would truly want to make, I feel that they’re selling themselves short– to what yield? But given the number of feature films with this formula, could there actually be pressure to make these deeply personal diasporic films? Is this the kind of film you should be making to get your foot in the door? Is this the college trauma essay you need to be writing for that acceptance letter?
The first thing you learn when you want to make a film is that it’s terribly expensive. One of the rudimentary ways to access funding and industry attention is through attending a pitch competition, one such as the So You Think You Can Pitch hosted by the Reel Asian Film Festival which is geared towards emerging Asian-identifying, Canadian filmmakers, doting a generous take-home prize package for a worthy short-film project. As it was my duty to report on the festival this year, I attended the competition out of curiosity for what kind of film project would come away securing the support for their projects. Interestingly enough, among stories about Muslim gay rights and a daydreaming teenage dramedy, the winning pitch was likely the most personal project on the stage, an animated project about “the director’s journey visiting Vietnam for the first time, where inner turmoil and questions of home began to surface, touching on themes of cultural identity and intergenerational trauma”. According to her website, the filmmaker, Carol Nguyen, describes her work to touch upon themes of “cultural identity, silence and memory”. The personal nature of the work is especially apparent in NO CRYING AT THE DINNER TABLE, where Nguyen interviews her own family on their reflections on a family death, a seemingly provocative act given the emotionally withheld nature of Asian families. Alongside NANITIC, both are beautifully crafted and gut-wrenchingly personal in how it traces the artifice of memory and heritage. The films also happen to cover decent ground in my criteria, checking off 1,2,3 and 5.
I had a chance to speak with a previous programmer for the pitch competition who shares how the pitch assessment is a reflection of how funding works in the industry, “There’s a complex system of how films get funded and the ways they are not just narrative projects, but also projects that move a lot of logistics and capital, and then are always anticipating how they move through a world of audiences (through festival circuits, cinema screenings, and distribution). That’s a huge part of the reason why things get funded or not”. Thus, naturally, the pitches are assessed on both the narrative vision as well as the logistics—timeliness of the project, how resources are allocated—feasibility, among others.
Nguyen’s win seemed obvious due to the thoughtfulness of her pitch as a seasoned pitcher. With comparatively more experience than the other contestants, it was clear she had planned out the execution of her film the most thoroughly. But without hearing from the judges directly, we won’t know if the diasporic personal trauma trope was a strong selling point of the winning film. What remains is that the trope will follow into the future.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Haaris Qaadri, the director of MAJBOOR-E-MAMOOL, a short film of his that also showed at the festival this past year. He describes himself as someone who likes to tell stories “featuring characters that are often unrepresented; focusing on mundane moments that spark emotion and change.” Our conversation started with him sharing with me some feedback he had received recently from a mentor for a film grant pitch he was putting together: “needs more tension and drama”, and to “play up the first-generation immigrant perspective” of his story. It seems to suggest that, as an Asian-Canadian storyteller, one strategy with grant writing could certainly be to commodify, market, and sell your own struggles as a minority member to garner those extra points in the absence of (or even sometimes the presence of) experience.
“The dominant mode by which a young, hungry writer could enter the conversation was by deciding which of her traumas she could monetize . . . be it anorexia, depression, casual racism, or perhaps a sadness like mine, which blended all three.” — Pop Song, Larissa Pham
As Yong describes the reality of students pre-maturely writing and selling their traumas, “(To get into college,) it becomes necessary that we sanitize that pain to make it marketable and strategic, to scrub away all the suffering, so what is left will fit into the narrow margins of what is palatable.” In comparison to the college admissions essay, film, and by extension, art, can be an appropriate space for individuals and communities to explore and heal their traumas. But “art for the self” risks contamination when made profitable for public consumption, where it begins to share that same intent with the college essay for public appeal. Yong spoke of the contradiction of how limited these essays are for applicants to be truly vulnerable, “your story has to be just sad enough that it gains sympathy, but not so sad that it makes you seem beyond help. Just critical enough to inspire change, but not so much that it actually criticizes systemic structures. Just honest enough that it seems real, but not so unfiltered that it creates discomfort”.
One of the reasons why these feature films feel particularly frustrating is that they resolve overarching problems with vague, band-aid solutions (e.g. go on a trip, a big breakdown scene) to create some form of optimistic closure. The expectation is that after this one breakthrough moment {4}, everything is more or less resolved by the end of Act III. If I’m really honest, I also don’t believe these stories are always captured in full transparency. There are many times where Asian diasporic stories purposefully omit their uglier sides, such as physical discipline, racism, and behaviour from unaddressed trauma/mental health (e.g. shoving things under the rug, aggression, etc). But by sheltering the audience from discomfort, we risk losing sight of the complex realities we grapple with on the day-to-day, to put blame, in turn, on the nebulous body of diaspora—the “what happened to us”, rather than reflecting on how we acted against those circumstances. If these stories are written with any genuine intent to heal, aren’t we then doing our communities a disservice by sheltering, and misrepresenting the realities of this experience?
“In a world infatuated with victimhood, has trauma emerged as a passport to status — our red badge of courage? The question itself might offend: perhaps it’s grotesque to argue about the symbolic value attributed to suffering when so little restitution or remedy is available.”- Parul Sehgal in The Case Against the Trauma Plot, New Yorker
The Agency to Tell the Stories I Want
I believe there is a particularly complex dilemma we face within these dramatic personal bleeding-heart films — these narratives cannot possibly be invalidated because to do so would be to invalidate trauma, oftentimes it is a personal traumatic event that has a basis in real lived experience.
To not express appreciation in the face of the filmmaker’s courageous vulnerability (or pity when related to trauma) would be disrespectful. As Parul Sehgal writes for the New Yorker, “The enshrinement of testimony in all its guises…elevated trauma from a sign of moral defect to a source of moral authority, even a kind of expertise.” And by that, they hold this special form of invincibility when bringing forth audiences, especially if the collective is trying actively to build towards the goal of inclusivity — the protection from criticism, in particular those from outside the community whose criticisms can mistakenly be interpreted as an invalidation towards an oppressed person’s experience. This creates the positive reinforcement loop to signal that these types of films are “safe” to make, all while with no requirement for narrative innovation.
Haaris remarked to me the many serious, self-similar narratives he has been seeing recently that, to him, very shallowly address these same diasporic themes. Could this be from the filmmakers hoping to put out such a film to have a completed project for their portfolio? And thus, propelled by the demand for representation, the authority of trauma, and the forced gentleness from its critics, I can see how this can attract a dangerous cesspool for self-similar, mediocre films.
When I shared this essay topic with my friend Nikita, a writer/director a part of the BIPOC TV Writer’s Lab’s comedy stream, she remarked to me that many of the scripts in her writing group center around identity and generational trauma. She suspects that it’s in part because these are the types of stories getting the most attention for minority communities right now.
Like the college essay, this appears to be the only way for minority filmmakers to distinguish themselves from merited white filmmakers. As Yong describes, “Black students shared their pain, white students shared their passions”.
It is experiences like these from Haaris and Nikita that suggest to me perhaps there’s a lack of agency for Asian, and perhaps by extension, BIPOC filmmakers to explore other areas of our identity because we’ve experienced how these funding bodies merit the commodification of our diasporic struggles. But personal stories are also incredibly difficult to tell, and while kudos to those who are able to share, I don’t think all filmmakers feel the need to or are ready to publicly tell them for that matter. So what if we don’t want to tell them at all?
As a young, Chinese Canadian woman in my 20s, I feel equally compelled to write about many facets of myself: my womanhood, my quarter-life crisis coming out of college, and my complicated identity with my professional life. Yet, these parts of my identity often feel overshadowed by what I feel I could be telling about my Asianness. I would also love to create my own Blade Runner sci-fi dream one day, or even try my hand at a horror film if I desire.
Perhaps these genres too feel too far-reaching for Asian diasporic films. Haaris recalled to me how his fellow filmmaker, Keff, faced dissuasion from his NYU peers from making his Asian gangster movie, Secret Lives of Asians at Night, to instead pursue something more familiar– like Ang Lee. After such projects faced dissuasion and financing struggles in the States, prompted Keff a career move to Taiwan upon graduating from NYU, where he pursues his film career today.
Are minority characters — black characters in this case — so disruptive a force that the mere presence of one alters a story, focuses it on race rather than whatever the author had in mind?” Octavia Butler, The Lost Races of Science Fiction
“Are minority characters so disruptive a force possibly because Asianness (or any ‘otherness’) complicates the essence of what makes up that genre here in the West (see controversy around the first Black stormtrooper), and funding bodies don’t believe the public ready to imagine the realities of these genres for minority peoples (see confusion in response to Afro and Indigenous-futurisms).
Side Note: On a positive note, rom-coms seem to be expanding outside of the traditional white, heterosexual relationships we’ve seen before. For Asians, we’ve seen CRAZY RICH ASIANS, THE HALF OF IT, TO ALL THE BOYS I’VE LOVED BEFORE that have all come out in the last couple of years. BROS, which came out this last year, is “the first gay romantic comedy from a major studio featuring an entirely LGBTQ principal cast”. Exciting!
The representation I would like in film and TV is not simply just having more faces on the screen by means of a cultural narrative that is deemed agreeable, but for minority filmmakers to exercise the liberty to tell the stories they want to tell. I am dying to see Asian bodies take on the universe of characters and genres: neo-noir villain, the romantic lead, the girl-next-door. I am more excited than I should be to see Asian Americans or Asian Canadians simply living their lives as much as going on a crazy-drug-induced cosmic adventure. A place at the table only feels right to me when I am not just seen for my Asianness, but as a multi-faceted human with many paths and crossroads in my intersectionality to tell.
Asian Diasporic Media I Find Refreshing
It should be acknowledged that there are already, in fact, a multitude of ways stories that center around these tragic themes of diaspora (e.g. loss, identity, belonging) are being told, far more exciting and insightful than the tiresome formula I had suggested.
One I have enjoyed recently looks at how the diasporic experience can be expanded to communities outside our own. Instead of thinking about these struggles in isolation, I think it could be more productive to capture how these cultural groups interact with one another generationally, and how they can unify in the face of adversity.
LAND OF GOLD
LAND OF GOD (dir. Nardeep Khurmi) was a film I saw at Reel Asian this past year that really exemplifies this. In its essence, it’s a film about fatherhood. The story follows an Indian-American trucker, Kiran who discovers a Mexican-American girl, Elena who had snuck onto his cargo truck. Kiran is reconciling with the idea of fatherhood upon the anticipation of his new baby and takes on caring for Elena throughout the course of the film, coming face-to-face with his apprehensions about being a parent. Kiran and Elena bond over music, religion, food, and what their ideas of “family” looks like. This type of messaging could serve to remind audiences of the commonalities between diasporic groups, and that such communities have the ability to help, learn and grow from one another.
Kiran is fueled by his traumatic memories with the police to protect Elena from Trump’s deportation siege, repurposing his own anguish to help others, rather than relieving it in isolation. Rather than ruminating over a personal past, it proposes an idea for how we can use these stories for a productive future.
The film left me incredibly hopeful and instilled a very actionable message of how minority communities can unite in the face of adversity.
Another kind I’ve been taken to recently goes completely against the “seriousness” and “tensive” part of that aforementioned formula. These films are light-hearted and experimental, and help us laugh through the thick of adversity. They also consider a multitude of perspectives and stakeholders in the diasporic experience, which can make audiences feel that they’re not so alone.
EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
EEAO (dir. The Daniels) has gotten quite a bit of attention. It’s the immigrant experience told through the curious possibilities of the multiverses near and past. As Simon Wu from the Yale Review had put it, “In EEAO, the younger generation projects itself into the mind of an older one as a generative fiction.” The idea for the narrative came out of a creative writing exercise that asked the directors to empathize with the choices made by their immigrant parents. Using the multiverse opened up the web of perspectives in the way we look at the diasporic stories across multigenerational time and space, exploring that interlocking system at large.
The film took the multiverse concept with full commitment and ran its course with it in its non-linear, multithreaded storytelling. What I liked most about the way it told the immigration story with a lot of fun in mind. Every hotdog finger, rock montage and fighting sequence adds spontaneity, breaking the barrier for audiences to confront such a topic with a form of lightness and humour. And of course, albeit, over-the-top, the film’s eccentric take on the multiplicity of genres makes it incredibly refreshing and liberating to witness.
Side Note: There were also some refreshing takes at the festival this past year with short films like 2166 (animation transporting through Sydney’s Cabramatta/Canley Vale) and DESI STANDARD TRAVEL TIME (Sci-fi!). Check them out!
Conclusion
As an audience member, I sympathize with what these films have been able to accomplish for the Asian community, in offering visibility to the complex issues it’s faced under the peripheral pressures of oppression, and I applaud the filmmakers for their excellence in capturing that with authenticity and vulnerability. It’s been incredibly powerful to witness how the community has responded to the surge of representation after being long brought up by white media. In another light, I could see how the formula I suggested may as well be the most forward, barebones way for telling a personal story about diasporic trauma—three-act structure, rich and accessible story, and based on reality. It may very much be the foundation for the many ways filmmakers can continue going about exploring these same themes in variance. From the few I had listed, it is notable that there’s already some nuance in the way we tell these diasporic stories, and I’m looking forward to more to come.
As a filmmaker, we are taught to write what we know. The young, inexperienced filmmaker is often limited to the most personal ones, often being the most developed and unique stories they have to offer, and often exacerbated by the funding bodies who see them as the most deserving of attention and their money.
Despite my apprehensions toward how diasporic stories are being told, diaspora will follow Asian immigrant filmmakers wherever we go. I know for sure it will inevitably touch everything I write, as it is so deeply woven into how I see family, identity, and the deeper facets of the human experience. But even if it is forever part of me, I wish to have autonomy over how I wish to tell it, not simply use it for relevancy and legitimacy from pity or the sake of cultural commodification.
I look forward to the point where it wouldn’t come as a shock to an audience that one’s own “Asianness” isn’t addressed so knowingly or expectedly as diasporic trauma, character archetype or tropes, but in the ways and the degrees that feels right to the filmmaker. I am equally, if not more excited for a future where minority storytellers have the liberty to tell stories about whatever they please; to explore themselves and their creativities outside of these drudging confines and throughout the narrative continuum.
My deepest thank yous to:
My editor Grayson, for your patience and support!
Matthew, Mickey, and Lychoo for helping me make sense of it all, and for challenging my claims.
Haaris, Jasmine and Nikita for sharing your experiences and insights
Lulu Liu is a digital multimedia artist, photographer and filmmaker whose work disseminates technology’s coalescence with art, and how one stays grounded through this metamorphosis. Some of her previous works have been featured by the Toronto International Film Festival and the Art Gallery of Ontario.
IG: @lulu.lemonless
