Summer Film Round-up: Sizzle or Fizzle?

Would you rather wander into the angsty mind of a gay APA teenager or hop the train to the surreal world of ‘2046’?  Read the reviews & make your educated selection.

By LYNDA LIN, Assistant Editor, Pacific Citizen

Bad, Bad Black Sheep

In Ethan Mao, loss of innocence begins with online chatting and ends with anonymous sex in a pickup truck — and that’s just the opening sequence.

As the family drama spirals down into a ridiculous hostage situation, the movie’s director/writer, Quentin Lee, steeps the story with what seems to be every Asian parent’s worst nightmare: a gay son with a lot of angst and a loaded gun.

A movie like this makes clear that the Asian Pacific American struggle with the model minority myth still runs deep. After Justin Lin’s Better Luck Tomorrow showed the world that APAs have bad streaks, a spate of recent APA films like Georgia Lee’s Red Doors and Alice Wu’s Saving Face have followed up with their own take on the conundrum of being both gay and APA, a complicated issue which Ang Lee artfully aired out in The Wedding Banquet (1993).

Except this time, we get a visual feast of fast-moving, MTV-style montages complemented with pulsating music to usher in a new kind of APA antihero: Ethan, 18, (played by newcomer Jun Hee Lee), whose state of mind seems dictated by his hairstyle (combed means obedient and spiky signifies rebellious).

According to Ethan’s voiceover, he was at one time a sober suburban high school student working in his father’s restaurant. But when his stepmother (Julia Nickson) discovers his gay magazine and tells his traditional father (Raymond Ma), Ethan immediately leaves home to become a street hustler.

Ethan’s hard life, filled with tricks and a haze of street drugs, flies by in musical montages punctuated with an unflinching shot of a satisfied john. He’s good at the job because he has the “right kind of look” though it’s not specified what that look is, but it’s presumably the look of emptiness.

His only salvation is Remigio (Jerry Hernandez), a drug dealer with such a kind spirit that he offers Ethan a place to stay and free drugs with no strings attached. He even offers to help Ethan break into his former suburban home on Thanksgiving while the family is away to steal the diamond necklace so beloved by his mother before she died.

When the robbery goes awry, (like it always does because like most other Asian families, the Maos keep their jewelry in a safety deposit box at the bank) Ethan is forced to take the family hostage for 24 hours until the bank opens. From there, the Maos and Remigio form an unlikely bond filled with misplaced moments like a family dinner where Ethan’s younger brother (David Tran) teaches Remigio how to use chopsticks.

The characters are all so poorly developed that it’s difficult to even sympathize with Ethan who acts more spoiled than misunderstood. He screams, “You just don’t get it, do you?” more than once, but we do because we’ve seen it before.

Lee’s directorial style has moments of genius, but the plodding story is too over-the-top to work.

Love and Loss in 2046

Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) left us wanting and waiting for more and now we can have some closure with his follow-up 2046.

But questions left lingering typically don’t get straight answers in Wong’s hands. Instead, the answers are revealed in a seductive riddle peeled away in layers.

Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung) reemerges onscreen with the emotional scars inflicted by his In the Mood for Love heartbreak. He is now a newspaper columnist penning erotic stories inspired by real life dalliances with women in his seedy hotel room — number 2047.

A steady stream of beautiful women perfumes his life, especially the women who live and love in room 2046. Former occupants include Lulu/Mimi (Carina Lau Ka Ling) and a fragile prostitute (Zhang Ziyi).

And as he shares fleeting moments with his lovers, he’s always reminded of his past love. The ruffle of a skirt, a girl’s innocent ability to complete his sentences or a simple black glove all have the ability to remind him of what he could not have.

Chow falls for women who remind him of his former lover Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung, who makes a cameo in this film).

Every memory, Wong reminds us in a fade to black message, “is a former lover.” Every memory can be connected to someone you loved at that time and lost.

All the characters in 2046 have experienced the loss of love and desire to recapture a memory.

They all live parallel lives with alternate identities and their stories span across several countries, three different languages (Cantonese, Mandarin and Japanese) and three time settings including a fictional future filled with androids.

It doesn’t get more complicated than this, but the mystery in this film is its beauty. Wong is the master of making simple love so haunting and sublime.

Wong triumphs with 2046, his most sophisticated work to date.