Go Back To China (Review)

Go Back To China

Go Back To China movie
2019
Written and directed by Emily Ting
Go Back To China movie
Next up on the 2019 CAAMFest slamfest of movies is Go Back To China, a movie about someone who goes back to China. Hold on, because we also have unexpected Richard Ng! Go Back To China has homespun indie cred and delivers a well-trod story (spoiled girl learns responsibility) with new and exciting settings and characters. The film is at its best when Sasha Li (Anna Akana) is still in fish out of water mode, but it unfortunately fails to stick the landing and just sort of ends, which is a darn shame considering the potential it had.

Spoiled trust fund kid Sasha Li can’t get a job and is blowing through her money on parties and shopping, until she is blackmailed by her father Teddy (Richard Ng Yiu-Hon) to return to China to help out at his toy factory, or she’ll be cut off from the rest of the money. Once there, Sasha has to adjust to both a new culture (she was raised in California) and dealing with her cranky father and her many half-siblings. She has an older half-sister, Carol (Lynn Chen – Saving Face), who already had to go back to China and work with dad, as well as two younger siblings from her dad’s next upgrade wife (since divorced, and dad now has a live-in girlfriend with whom he has an “arrangement” with that is the same age as Sasha)

The different aged family members even becomes a plot point, as they both have their own layers of resentment for the families that they were replaced by but also see the same new families get replaced in turn and the kids get filled with the same resentment. Sasha and Carol spar due to both seeing the other as the favored daughter, Carol longing for Sasha’s freedoms while Sasha seeing Carol as just a goody-goody who does whatever dad wants. Teddy shows he still hasn’t learned to be a real father yet when he upsets the next generation of his kids, leading his daughters to have to lead in picking up the mess. As someone with disappointing family members, this is sadly truer than it ever has to be.
Go Back To China movie
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Saving Face (Review)

Saving Face

Saving Face
2004
Starring
Michelle Krusiec as Wil (Wilhelmina Pang)
Joan Chen as Ma
Lynn Chen as Vivian Shing
Jessica Hecht as Randi – Hospital Co-Worker
Ato Essandoh as Jay – Neighbor
Directed by Alice Wu
Saving Face
A first time writer and director, low budget, and a seeming Asian Lesbian hook, this film seemed like just another gimmick artsy film to play before five people in one of the dirty theaters in town before it gets replaced by a film about Mexican Day Laborers in 1950’s Quebec who are also drug running escorts called Inherit My Skin. Yet it was better than I guessed it could be, or even deserved to be based on the low amount of buzz it’s seeming to get on the indie set. An entertaining drama about life in the Asian American community as reality, freedom, and secrets meet traditional notions of life, family, honor, and saving face. It’s a lot better than that line I just typed, trust me.
Saving Face
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