Aside from a soundtrack that seems pleasant but overly familiar, the same guitar noodling found in five of seven independent films, this was a total, wonderful surprise. Michael Kang’s film follows Ernest (Jeffrey Chyau), a chubby 13-year-old trapped cleaning rooms at his family’s half-legitimate/hourly-rated motel, dealing with being 13. Not too much happens–none of the big moments or simple arcs of the conventional independent film, and equal parts funny and sad without ever reaching. It’s just a lovely, great little film.
I think one of the things that impressed me most was the treatment of sexuality and class–the film was unflinching in portraying kids circling around desire, but not in sleazy Larry-Clark “realite” fashion, instead opting for a kind of comic, somber honesty: sex is all around these kids. Ernest’s interrupted attempt to masturbate with a stuffed rabbit was handled with such calm humor, trusting both the kid acting and the viewers watching to understand and accept what was going on. And Ernest has a moment, responding to a “white-trash” boy bullying him, that reminded me all too much of some of my own confrontations in school–he knew (and exploited) in the clumsiest of fashions the boy’s entrapment in certain class-constricted contexts, and the moment slides by. So many moments do–the film defies our desire for the big epiphanies, the central conflict. Of course, there are conventions, and conflicts–Mom’s stiff, unyielding discipline and love, an older boy-man (the excellent Sung Kang) whose own pain leads him to befriend Ernest… but these elements aren’t trumped up in ways that overwhelm or anchor the film. It’s Ernest’s movie, and as keen-eyed in its portrait of puberty as I’ve seen.
MINOR SPOILER: The film closes in a perfect example of its understated skill, as Ernest returns home, post-argument and minor-decadent-escape, and he and his mother stand on either side of the motel desk and at the edges of the frame. They stare at one another for a while, and we cut to close-ups of each face, but there is no dialogue. And the film closes on a slightly-longer shot of Ernest, a tear running from one eye. Pitch-perfect.
Maybe it was the writing or the acting, but I was not so fond of Sung Kang’s role in this film. I saw The Motel months ago, but I really did like Ernest, his awkward relationship with the girl who works at the Chinese restaurant, his painful desire to write fiction and the way such desires are antithetical to the work ethic which fuels (however cliched) this first generation immigrant family’s dream of success and financial security. The ending was very warm, underplayed yet emotionally resonant (I cried). I also like the way the film captured a particular geographic space–those forgotten, now run-down suburban circles of hell which suffer from middle-class white flight but offer families like Ernest’s the opportunity to raise their status. It’s a charming film and definitely worth seeing.