Shirts & Skins

I was lucky enough to catch this one morning on IFC, and I'd definitely have to recommend it. It opens the viewers eyes to the pain of being culturally different, ignorance, innocence, and stereotypes. Wonderfully written. Hopefully this movie stirs a little bit of thought about how we perceive and treat other human beings. We all feel the same....

Wow, I haven't been able to find out much about this film and the IMDb cast listing does not seem to be complete or correct. I was flipping channels early on a Friday morning and came across this film somewhere in the first five minutes. The 'Diversity Meeting' seemed like the kind of uncomfortable and contrived situation that only an urban state university could come up with. It really took me back to my UMass/Boston days in Weatley Hall. However, the performance of the actor portraying the Chinese-Jewish lawyer was what really kept me watching, she had a great way of expressing the complex emotions of the character with her face and body language. Its a useful film to demonstrate the difficulties of assimilating into the corporate frat-boy culture.

This film grabs your attention and holds it through its 20-minute showing on the IFC channel. The character, played by female Sam Tsao, is named Anne Wiseman, a cigar-smoking career climber who attends a diversity seminar with an older man of Chinese descent. An attractive woman who is trying to break through the glass ceiling of her male dominated workplace. The actor plays her role superbly. She wishes to be thought of as one of the boys and not the Chinese-American she is. She also wants to be considered non-Asian, by her peers. The ending of the brief film finds her expressing her emotions out of sight of others in the ladies' room. Highly recommend this film.

I found this to be excellently done--very touching and thought provoking. I can't help but think that shorts are especially difficult because they have an idea or theme to get across to the viewer in a limited amount of time, with limited budgets. The short is about a pretty woman named Anne Wiseman (played by Sam Tsao) who is Chinese-American and meets a Chinese businessman (Ben Wang) during a "diversity meeting". She is in denial of her heritage, and views herself strictly as an American. During her brief meeting with Michael, the businessman who is also lumped into the "Asian" category, he has a lasting impact on her life and viewpoint of her own ethnic background. Very interesting and worth a watch.

Sometimes it seems that all the intelligent story-telling in film today is done by independents and short films, and that's certainly true of this short.

This is an unusually well-done character study, centered on Chinese-American businessman Michael Lin (Ben Wang), an out-of-towner visiting New York along with several other members of his company for a diversity meeting before going out for dinner as a group. As the only Asian at the meeting, he feels isolated at first, but he perks up when Anne Weisman (Sam Tsao), a Jewish Chinese-American attorney for the company arrives late for the meeting. But she immediately makes it clear that she has a different agenda, and she does not identify with him or her Asian heritage. After several attempts by him to engage her in friendly conversation, she rudely brushes him off and pointedly ignores him when they go to the bar.

Michael proceeds to get very drunk, and begins to behave boorishly. He eventually storms out of the bar, and while walking around the complex, strips his shirt off in mid-winter and in his drunken rage, enacts vestiges of his Chinese heritage.

I don't want to spoil the ending by giving it away, but it's surprising and sad. This short is well worth watching.