Coming Home Again Chang Rae Lee Themes

An autobiographical essay by Korean-American novelist Chang-rae Lee, published in theNew Yorker dorsum in 1995, is the spark for Wayne Wang'south highly personal mother-son drama Coming Home Again. Lee is credited as co-screenwriter of the pic, which describes the way a immature writer named Chang-rae drops his day job and girlfriend in New York to accept care of his mother, who is slowly dying of tum cancer. Shot in a light-filled San Francisco apartment, information technology's a far weep from dreary or depressing, merely it also doesn't offer any like shooting fish in a barrel style to enter its emotional territory. Viewers who take gone through the feel of taking care of an ailing parent or relative may place more fully with the slow-moving story.

A bigger question is whether such an inner-directed essay exploring the intimate psychology of the female parent-son bail contains plenty narrative to make full a feature film, peculiarly in this example where the action is claustrophobically set almost entirely in a unmarried location, like a phase play. Similar to another picture that bowed in Toronto this yr, The Friend, directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite and based on an laurels-winning autobiographical Esquire commodity (coincidentally nearly a woman dying of cancer), information technology struggles to notice cinematic ways to communicate the thoughts and feelings that are its original stuff.

The Bottom Line A female parent-son bond and so delicately personal, it'south hard to enter.

Wang, of course, is a veteran with a wide variety of films under his chugalug, from Maid in Manhattan toThe Joy Luck Club, and he has dealt sensitively with the Asian American experience. Here, the backstory of protag Chang-rae (Justin Chon) is that he was accepted at Exeter and moved up the condition ladder, which meant moving away from his parents and losing the traditional close ties of Korean families. His homecoming is an attempt to become back some of what he has lost, before it'southward as well late to testify his female parent how much he loves her. When nosotros watch him changing Mom's IV canteen or anxiously following her to the bathroom, it'south hard not to read guilt on his face.

And he cooks for her.

Food is equated with feelings and memories of the past for Chang-rae. He learned how to melt Korean dishes at her knee, by watching her prepare the special cuts of meat and fish with all their spices and trimmings. Entire scenes document his prowess at preparing nutrient the way she once did. But the terrible irony is that the tum cancer makes it incommunicable for her to swallow or even consume.

Just a handful of characters add together their feelings to this mother-son duet. Chang-rae's male parent (John Prevarication) makes himself so scarce that it comes as a surprise he lives in the apartment. He's a higher professor and he may have had an affair behind his wife's back. He shows his insensitivity by railing confronting the "sappy old dear songs" his wife listens to, while he talks about his paper on "the changing rhetoric of romantic love." These are faint clues to a long and unhappy marriage.

Also in deprival over Mom's disease is Chang-rae's career-woman sis Jiyoung (Christina July Kim), whose last-infinitesimal arrival with her husband upsets the family ecology for a spell.

In the master scene that comes belatedly in the film, Chang-rae fixes a magnificent dinner for New year's day's Eve, using all his mother'due south recipes. The loving intendance he puts into slicing the short ribs and marinating the shrimp is all for her. Like a child who won't accept reality, he refuses to have her affliction on its most basic level — that she can no longer gustation the food of his love. It'southward a frustrating, embarrassing evening for all concerned and and then delicately acted by Chon and Jackie Chung, who luminously plays the mother, that information technology hits a notation of aching sorrow and grief more constructive than any show of pathos.

The motion-picture show has an blusterous look to it thanks to cinematographer Richard Wong's diffused lighting through a multitude of windows. There is even a wall-size window between the kitchen and the mother's ill room, which allows two different scenes to be visible at once, and suggests the intimate bail that Chang-rae struggles to keep live betwixt food and love.

Production company: Middle for Asian American Media
Cast: Justin Chon, Jackie Chung, Christina July Kim, John Lie
Managing director: Wayne Wang
Screenwriters: Wayne Wang, Chang-rae Lee, based on Lee'south essay
Producer: Donald Young
Executive producers: Stephen Gong, Eunei Lee, Heidi Levitt, Jean Noh
Managing director of photography: Richard Wong
Production designers: Minseo Kang, Elyse Wang
Editors: Deirdre Slevin, Ashley Pagan
Venue: Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations)
World sales: Asian Shadows (ICM Partners in U.South.)

86 minutes

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Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/coming-home-again-review-1239558/

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