Coming Home Again Chang Rae Lee Movie

Jackie Chung is devastating as a Korean matriarch contesting cancer in this patient, Ozu-esque study of loss.

Chiseled as a haiku, managing director Wayne Wang'south "Coming Home Once again" opens a window onto dying days in all their ugliness, but also onto their possibility of redemption for a mother and son. Formally impeccable and observant, the "Joy Luck Lodge" filmmaker's latest wastes none of its 85 minutes in unpeeling the relationship between Chang-rae (Justin Chon) and his ailing mom (Jackie Chung). At the heart of this Ozu-esque drama is Chung, who supplies a heartbreaking operation as a woman trying to make upwards for lost time, while besides trying to explain to her son why time slipped from under her in the first identify, leaving behind some potent maxims and Korean recipes in the process.

"Coming Dwelling house Once more" is co-written past Wang and the real Chang-rae Lee from his moving 1995 New Yorker essay. The moving-picture show transplants that piece'south late-1980s flow to present-day San Francisco, the at present-gentrified hub to the Bay Expanse tech chimera that has all but engulfed the urban center'due south multicultural foundation. Chang-rae has abandoned his life equally a writer in New York to intendance for his mother, at present crippled with cancer and unable to so much every bit lift herself out of bed while her married man works as a psychiatrist. Chang-rae is bitter nearly leaving backside his East Coast life — one far more westernized and remote from his Southward Korean immigrant heritage — just more aroused at himself for his squandered potential.

His new, makeshift life equally a caregiver in San Francisco is a carefully mapped-out routine, offset and catastrophe in a solitary key. Simply a constant in his regimen is recreating his mother'south beloved Korean recipes, including kalbi, a piquant, gingery dish of marinated brusque rib, that kicks the movie off on a mouthwatering level. Which is curious, given that this is ultimately a grief drama, but there's pleasure to be had in the culinary imagery, and information technology fits the context: Well-nigh of their lives, Chang-rae and his mother have communicated through food, and tradition.

But now, every bit communicated through elliptical flashback, all that was cached under the rug is coming out, with resentments and regret surfacing all effectually. His female parent has a lot of questions for the dissipated Chang-rae, who left San Francisco at a immature age for boarding school in New York. ("Why didn't we come across your friends?" "You never talk about your girlfriend.") Getting those questions answered is another story, because these 2 are running out of fourth dimension. Some of the back-and-forths between mother and son take on a question-and-answer-session quality that tells more than information technology shows, even if it's e'er in service of communicable usa up on decades of a life shared in under an hour and a half.

"Coming Home Over again"

Outsider Pictures

Wang and editors Ashley Infidel and Deirdre Slevin flip dorsum and forth between by and not-so distant present, as Chang-rae showtime learns of the news of his mother's metastasizing cancer, and his family wrestles to command information technology. Other jealousies bubble up. Chang-rae'south panicked sister accuses him of being "the favorite." Hushes that his male parent may take cheated on his married woman besides boil over. Meanwhile, their mother is in agony. This is not a happy home, but Wang doesn't dwell in the awful particulars. Instead, with cinematographer Richard Wong, he waits coolly for tacit truths to reveal themselves. "Coming Home Once again" is at its most aching and existent when watching routine play out from afar, or normalcy try to recalibrate itself inside the house, whether when Chang-rae'southward female parent, very sick and frustrated, tries to pigment her toenails, or he attempts to make kalbi but tin't get the recipe or method exactly right.

During a New Year's Eve dinner, everything falls autonomously, and information technology'south Chung's moment. Her turn as a woman getting lost to fourth dimension and disease is a devastating belfry of art on its own. Peculiarly in moments where she reveals truths most her immigrant past to Chang-rae, like abandoning her life in Korea for America, Chung conveys an ocean of feeling even when naught's beingness said. Just the screenplay affords her plenty of gutting maxims that volition likely haunt Chang-rae for eternity. "Y'all tin can fall out of love and go back," she tells her son. "But it'south never the same."

Chung's understated performance is a plumbing fixtures center for a moving-picture show well-nigh always operating at whisper-level. "She knew that the flavor of a good dish developed non at in one case but in stages," Chang-rae Lee wrote of his female parent in the New Yorker essay. Wang seems to have applied that strategy to his latest moving-picture show, with a complex slow fire that sneaks up on you.

Grade: B+

"Coming Habitation Again" opens in virtual cinemas on Friday, October 23. Head to Outsider Pictures' website for a complete list of participating theaters.

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Source: https://www.indiewire.com/2020/10/coming-home-again-review-wayne-wang-1234594423/

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