Worth: $15.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
CHOI Seung-yoon, Ethan Hwang, Dohyun Noel Hwang
Intro:
… its central performances and truly beautiful visuals make for a powerful and heartfelt ode to the struggle and potential triumph of finding one’s own place in the world, both past and present.
This film is haunted. Or, at least, it feels like it was designed to give that impression. And yet, this isn’t a horror film. As DP Christopher Lew’s camera floats over scenes of So-young (CHOI Seung-yoon) and her son Dong-hyun (Ethan Hwang) navigate their respective lives as Korean immigrants in Canada, there’s a melancholic feeling of distance to the framing. Whether it’s standing still to drink in one of the many long takes, or gliding after the characters with such energy that it makes the average drone shot look like something out of A Ghost Story by comparison, underpinning it all is this intangible ache; a desperate desire to connect, to reassure, but only being able to observe from a distance.
When Riceboy Sleeps premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, writer/director/editor/actor Anthony Shim said at the Q&A that the camera point-of-view is meant to represent So-young’s husband and Dong-hyun’s father, whose grim fate is detailed in the film’s opening narration.
We’re pulling from lore outside of the film itself, we admit, but it’s the kind of detail that serves to explain just how emotionally pulverising this story is intended to be. And when it gets to moments like So-young telling an old folk story about a mother and son climbing a mountain, cutting to Dong-hyun at the dimly-lit tail-end of a house party as Ill Bill’s nasal grimness soundtracks a moment of jarring cruelty… yeah, it’s difficult not to feel the impact.
Like with Minari, Past Lives, and to a certain extent Joy Ride, it’s a depiction of the Korean diaspora that examines cultural assimilation and the nagging worry of whether anything viable will grow out of these replanted roots. Both Ethan Hwang and Dohyun Noel Hwang as the older and younger Dong-hyun respectively are excellent, portraying the character’s alienation from his surroundings and even from himself, but it’s CHOI Seung-yoon who categorically steals the show.
She serves as the apotheosis of the working immigrant mother, standing strong for her boy in the face of casual racism and general disregard while fighting the strain that is being put on her in the process. Every moment of relief and even elation at being able to connect with others who know what this feels like, is contrasted by the reality that, alone or otherwise, the worry about doing right by her son persists; the pain of what is left unspoken as she asks her son what he thinks of her soon-to-be-fiancé Simon (Anthony Shim) burns like a mouthful of gochu.
Riceboy Sleeps goes after the audience’s heart like a speed bag, and it thankfully has the film craft and emotional resonance to make it work. It doesn’t stray all that far from what other diasporic dramas tend to aim for, and there’s a few moments here and there that end up wobbling its stance (one of the most jarring moments of toilet humour in recent years, for a start), but its central performances and truly beautiful visuals make for a powerful and heartfelt ode to the struggle and potential triumph of finding one’s own place in the world, both past and present.
