A young Taiwanese man faces an agonising choice when offered a new life in the US in this heartfelt drama from a writer of Parks and Recreation
Last year, Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, starring Awkwafina, tapped into Asian-Americans’ “third generation” experience of cultural dislocation and yearning: a need to come to terms with the old country of their grandparents’ time. In that film, Awkwafina’s middle-aged dad was played by Tzi Ma, whose gentle, sensitive face mutely spoke volumes about hardship and sacrifice. He plays a very similar role in this heartfelt, flawed debut feature from Taiwanese-American director Alan Yang – whose track record is in TV comedy, having written and produced for the hit show Parks and Recreation.
It is a very different work: serious and personal, clearly fictionalising at some level aspects of the director’s own family experience, and perhaps self-conscious in a way that successful
comedy isn’t. Sometimes the transitions and flashbacks are a bit on the nose, and the modern-day sequences have a TV-movie look to them. And yet there is a real emotional surge in the way Yang conjures the past.