It got me. It did. What a beautifully directed, unembellished family drama. I can't remember being consistently perched at the edge of tears for that long in a movie recently.
Also, that's probably the single best twist I've ever seen in a tearjerker.Toggle Spoiler
saw it last night - unembellished is a really good word for it, i did really appreciate that aspect of it. i feel like it also did convey that claustrophobia that comes with nonstop family interaction like this. all the acting was soooooo good. i really really wanted to cry tho and didn't lol, but that's o-kay.
Saw this and have been recommending it to my friends -- both asian and non-asian (I am asian). Not surprisingly a lot easier to convince my asian friends to do so. Even so, there's a lot of universality in storytelling and crafting technique that will appeal to people who like to dork out about films. Kind of interesting to see the mixed tones of humor and sadness and in certain audiences there being a split between people who laugh and get silent (sad) -- the reveal of the acupuncture burns is one of those scenes, for example.
from her wiki: an interview with the publication, she described her next project as “very grounded science fiction.” woah i can't wait. gonna check out her this american life episode soon.
So that scene was the ending of an act that showed some of the mental burden of being a Chinese woman -- the squabbling in the restaurant with the moms going at it, the scene with her and her auntie talking about how it's not something for them to tell Grandma and auntie being callous about it but saying "ouch that hurts" when she get a massage on her feet and the masseuse saying "you must be holding onto a lot of stress" or something to that effect, etc. IMO, the burns that she reveals was kind of showing the hidden emotional burden that a lot of Chinese women have to deal with, but also can be seen as the emotional burden of the situation at hand (i.e. the familial lie).
I went and saw the movie a couple of different times -- one during opening night where there was an audible gasp with some tempered laughs of how visually comical it looks, whereas another time (couple of weeks later) it was just all laughs based on some level of discomfort and visual comedy imo. Either way, I think there's a sort of tandem of being confused of when to laugh and when to feel pain or cry during a lot of this movie (Hao Hao looking like he's about to throwup but actually breaking down emotionally at his wedding is another good audience reaction scene).
oh wow, yeah i did not make that connection to the burden with the burns - that's amazing. and yeah i was totally expecting us to see some vomit during that scene w/Hao Hao. I loved the acting/presence of Hao Hao and it felt pretty realistic/rewarding how we didn't necessarily need to know his explicit thoughts regarding the situation, what his relationship to Nai Nai was, etc.
god that scene with at the restaurant with the squabbling was so good. it was all so good.
Really liked this movie. And appreciate your posts ghostguts. I’m a white dude and the closest I come to relating to it on a cultural level was awkwafina’s jokes about nyc but I just lost one of my grandmothers and so a lot of that really rang true for me. Scrambled I think your post about the claustrophobia of having to spend days and days with family members who are all going through the same thing but all feeling different things and not knowing how to relate is well said. I also just thought this movie was funny and heartbreaking and idk I liked it so much and I’m glad movies like it are being made!
in the process of making 100k off serie a fan tokens by socios
i saw this at Sundance earlier this year and my Lyft driver got lost, so i was late to the screening and the only seat they had left for me was up in the balcony
5 minutes after the movie started, Lulu Wang came up to the balcony and sat right beside me for the entire screening
i cried through much of the last third (as did most of the audience, including Lulu) and she thanked me for coming to see her film as we were leaving
great fucking movie
Yo I heard his dad took all the money from the HMO like some kind of Drackela.
patchperfect wrote:i saw this at Sundance earlier this year and my Lyft driver got lost, so i was late to the screening and the only seat they had left for me was up in the balcony
5 minutes after the movie started, Lulu Wang came up to the balcony and sat right beside me for the entire screening
i cried through much of the last third (as did most of the audience, including Lulu) and she thanked me for coming to see her film as we were leaving
patchperfect wrote:i saw this at Sundance earlier this year and my Lyft driver got lost, so i was late to the screening and the only seat they had left for me was up in the balcony
5 minutes after the movie started, Lulu Wang came up to the balcony and sat right beside me for the entire screening
i cried through much of the last third (as did most of the audience, including Lulu) and she thanked me for coming to see her film as we were leaving
great fucking movie
holy shit dude, that's amazing. (also whoa, i had no idea she was dating barry jenkins!)
this is now the third thread i've posted about this movie in (lol), but yeah it ruled.
This was fine. Boring, cute. But the very very ending where you find out the grandma didn't die sapped all the emotional charge from it for me.Toggle Spoiler
And I feel like this year is really about, just the year of realizing stuff.
Ersaph wrote:This was fine. Boring, cute. But the very very ending where you find out the grandma didn't die sapped all the emotional charge from it for me.Toggle Spoiler
Lulu Wang's grandmother surviving doesn't mean Billi's did Toggle Spoiler
It's sort of a peculiar thing to end the film with, even if I understand why she included it. Also, it... uh... probably won't continue to be true in a few years.Toggle Spoiler