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 LiMar 5
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 Gaudeul

@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

Mar 5 at 5:13pmMastodon for Android
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 🥰