Jason LiMar 5

I really wanted to like this, but when I saw this at a film festival last year, I left the cinema feeling like I’d been slapped in the face. Friends and fellow Asians, you have been warned.

Mild spoilers in the thread below (see spoiler scale in the images!)

Show threadJason Li
Mar 5 at 4:54pmWeb
Show threadJason LiMar 5
Show threadJason LiMar 5

Thank you for reading!

All of the images in this post are taken from the film's publicity materials. So while I might have spoiled some plot points, I have not spoiled any of the movie's excellent visual storytelling.

If you do decide to still watch this movie, I hope that this post will help set your expectations correctly, and dull the pain of its orientalist depictions. 11 years after #OscarsSoWhite, so much has changed, and so little has changed.

Show threadAlexia GaudeulMar 5

@jasonli based on this book by Amelie Nothomb, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Character_of_Rain

The movie is probably quite bad, but the book is good IMO, with all the provisos you mention. I consider those as the memories of a person's childhood, quite tainted indeed, but an interesting document about the building of a psyche.

The Character of Rain - Wikipedia

Show threadAlexia GaudeulMar 5
@jasonli i guess Amelie 's book are the childhood memories of an expatriate. Spending one's childhood in a foreign country is an interesting and increasingly common experience, not to be dismissed as invalid in my opinion.
Show threadJason LiMar 5
@agaudeul yes that’s the book! if it’s as inward looking (about building a psyche as you say), which is a thing books do well, then I’d guess it feels different from the movie, which has the kid narrating but not much introspection/complexity that way.
Show threadJason LiMar 5
@agaudeul As for the foreign childhood experience, I take issue here with its unexamined Western privilege and lack of cultural awareness (at least that’s what the movie portrayed), not the whole genre which is indeed fertile ground for art and increasingly common.i
Show threadJason LiMar 5
@agaudeul would love to know more about what your impression of the book was tho! And also whether it covered a longer time span into the authors adolescence
Show threadAlexia GaudeulMar 5
@jasonli sure, she doesn't examine her privilege much in the book, I guess hers is more of a novel, and she leaves the interpretation to the reader. Some will pick up on it, others not, but I see this more as the responsibility of the reader. I don't know what she should do as a novelist, write a preface with warnings to the reader? Insert sociological and political considerations in the text?
Show threadAlexia GaudeulMar 5
@jasonli anyway, the author is interesting, I recommend reading at least one book of hers, maybe the book the movie is based on. Sorry the movie seems bad.
Show threadJason LiMar 5
@agaudeul The movies probably soured my appetite for reading sadly but it IS good to know the book seems to have a lot more context, and probably doesn’t lean on the weird humble servant trope that the film deploys. So thank you for filling in those details for me in my brain!
Show threadAlexia GaudeulMar 5
@jasonli nice interacting with you!
Show threadJason LiMar 5
@agaudeul likewise 🥰
Show threadAlexia GaudeulMar 5
@jasonli it is maybe shocking for a white French-speaking kid to claim to be Japanese (wrong skin color?), but that is apparently what Amelie claimed as a kid. She went to a Japanese kindergarten and learned Japanese. Wrote a hilarious but probably, for some, offensive book about her experience in corporate Japan. Again, didn't see the movie, it probably doesn't introduce well the context and perspective. Orientalist, sure, but most Euro-Asian interactions are tinged with prejudice and ignorance
Show threadJason LiMar 5

@agaudeul interesting! The movie does not have her going to kindergarten (her house servant simply teaches her a few Japanese characters is all that’s shown). A kid saying strange things is not a big deal generally, but I read it in addition with everything else the movie was doing.

As for European interactions with Asians being tinged with prejudice and ignorance – exactly, and as an Asian person it’s a painful to see it celebrated on screen, and made into a big budget movie.

Show threadAlexia GaudeulMar 5
@jasonli yes, tough, the filmmakers should have been more careful. Paradoxically, btw, Amelie Nothomb is much liked in Japan where she is seen as an interesting oddity. Also, for reflection, there is another Amelie movie, Amelie Poulain, that uses all possible clichés about France, and was a big hit in Japan. Lots of Japanese come to Paris thinking it will be like the movie :P
Show threadJason LiMar 5
@agaudeul interesting. Didn’t realize her fame had made it back over to Japan. And aha! Yes, I have seen that movie many moons ago. A gorgeous cartoon of France ;)