'Happiness' Doubly Troubling For Viewers

Double Happiness

directed by Mina Shum

starring Sandra Oh

at the Brattle Theater--

International Festival of Women's

Cinema (29 films, through May 4, call 876-6837)

tonight 6pm and Friday 7:15 pm

Director Mina Shum will be present at both screenings

Animated wonton soup and flying chopsticks dance around the screen in the cartoon-like opening credits of "Double Happiness," writer/director Mina Shum's debut feature. Strangely, the tone of cutely-stylized disorder established in this stir-fry beginning sets the mood for the remainder of the film.

Beginning with a shot of the Li family dinner table from the viewpoint of the spinning lazy-susan, the movie explores how Jade (Sandra Oh), the family's twenty-two-year-old daughter, balances her Chinese parents' expectations with her Canadian upbringing and aspirations to be an actress.

From the beginning, we are impressed with Jade's engaging character. Her irreverent witticisms are refreshingly down-to-earth, and her surprisingly low-voiced thespian soliloquies are dramatic, if not wholly sensical. Also, Jade's repeated efforts to appease her aggravatingly stubborn disciplinarian father garner audience sympathy.

When Jade's parents determine that she is old enough, they embark on a quest to find a proper Chinese man for her to marry. By the time the Li family's matchmaking escapades begin, we are throughly on Jade's side. The first of the eligible men is Andrew, a handsome Chinese lawyer who turns out himself to be less than interested. Jade agrees to the arrangement hoping only to appease her family so that they will let her pursue her acting career.

Jade's thin facade of compliance is shattered, however, when she meets Mark, a while English student. While Jade's arranged dates continue to fail, her relationship with Mark grows. Predictably, it's not long before she is forced to decide whether she'll submit to her parents' wishes or live her own life.

The film's strength is in exposing the stereotypes that dictate Jade's existence. When Jade meets Mark, he approaches her as she waits alone outside an after-hours club after being rejected by the bouncer. She attempts to ward off his advances by affecting the stereotypically demure, non-English speaking attitude of a Chinese-born girl. When his persistence charms her, her switch of persona back to her Western personality is sharp enough to cleverly echo the polar extremes that the movie is trying to demonstrate.

The movie's weakness lies in the fact that interactions between the characters, especially between Jade and her younger sister Pearl, sometimes seem forced. The viewer is constantly plagued by the nagging consciousness that the actors are acting, rather than actually inhabiting an alternate world. This failure seems a result of a discrepancy between the director's expectation of the rapport that the characters should share and the actual quality of their interactions.

In playing Jade, Sandra Oh seems forced into a box that stereotypically defines how those that are limited by stereotypes should act. It is in this paradox that much of the power of the movie is lost.

Also distracting are the contrived breaks in the action of the film. Throughout the movie, Jade's narrative is broken up by cuts to an interview scene in which supporting characters relate personal stories. While this technique gives insight into these characters' motivations, the limited relevancy of their anecdotes does not make up for the distracting nature of the interruption.

Another distraction is Shum's bizarre use of lighting and slow motion. The slow motion effect pops up at the most curious times, such as when Jade stands in front of the mirror with a "Connie Chung" hairstyle, having been primped by her mother for her arranged date with Andrew. The scene in which Jade and Mark meet is awash in a deep blue light. This seems a strange mesh of lighting effects and emotion.

These distracting stylizations do serve to distinguish the film from others which portray second-generation immigrant children's struggle to balance parental expectation's with their own goals. "Double Happiness" remains most successful when it stay within this genre (familiar from films like "The Joy Luck Club" and "The Wedding Banquet"). When it attempts to step outside of this boundary, the intrigue of Jade's romance loses its force to the distracting strangeness of Shum's style.