Eat a Bowl of Tea

A rarity in that we have an American made Chinese film that isn't based on Triad violence.

A breath of fresh air it is.

Young man and woman romance each other in America. Said couple is Chinese. They wish to stick to the traditions but adapt to their new homeland.

A romantic film that you can bring the wife or girlfriend to. And anyone into China or Asia will like it too. The culture gets a good going over here. In a positive way mind you.

And there is a lot of truth to it all too. Yes, elder Chinese men came to the U.S. alone and sometimes never saw their wives for 20-30 years. These marriages lasted. Impressive.

Romance with steamed dumplings here. Nicely done Wayne.

Older cultures coming to a new land. Chinese americans coming to america. At first, due to the immigration laws, it could only be the male workers. Then, when wives were allowed to come to the U. S., they brought their customs and points of view. Pride, respect, outlook on family. When Ben Loy (Russell Wong) gets married, but hasn't come up with offspring, his wife Mai Oi ( Cora Miao) thinks she has a solution... at least to some of her problems. Will this help, or will it only cause more problems? This is all about family pride, revenge, resolving issues within the community, and not involving outsiders. It's quite good. Directed by Wayne Wang, who also happens to be married to Maio, the female lead. Wang would also do the Joy Luck Club a couple years after this.

Ignore the picture that was used as the poster of this film, it is completely incongruous to the story. This is a film set in New York's Chinatown about a couple, one an Americanized Chinese young man (Ben Loy) who agrees to marry a young lady (Mei Oi) from a small village in China. She comes to New York and the story is the struggle of their compatibility. The movie is set in the late 1940's/early 1950's and it has a good rhythm to it. Most of it is in English, but that doesn't matter. At times you feel like a voyeur, looking in on this couple and wondering what will happen next to them. They do have their problems, and she even takes on a lover (Eric Tsang, who has a smallish but pivotal part), but the story is about the clash between Chinese traditions and their present day. While the film is good, it partly suffers from melodramatic overload. If you're interested in seeing a film about the immigrant experience, this is a good one about the Chinese one. I saw it on TCM in the wee hours of the morning. I watched it through, so that in and of itself is an endorsement.

A few years after WWII, a young Asian-American man who served his country is sent off to China by his father in the hopes of bringing back a bride. His mother and extended family are still over there, having been separated for decades because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. He's introduced to a young woman, they marry, and then return to America.

The films strengths are in its representation. We see Asian-Americans as real people here, with different personalities, multi-lingual, and having the same problems anyone else has. They have a tightknit community, but are patriotic and assimilated, particularly the younger generation. The stress on the young couple is both cultural (the pressure to produce kids, the lack of privacy) as well as universal (work stress leading to problems in the bedroom, spending too much time in front of the TV, and infidelity). The story went to places I really did not expect it to go, touching on comedy, romance, and drama, and I liked that. I also liked the visibility on the Exclusion Act, which serves as a backdrop to the story, and other little elements, including the reference to Japanese internment when the Korean War starts brewing (fearing it may happen to them), as well as the guy being bruised up after being in police custody.

Undermining all this is the film's acting, which let's just say didn't deserve any awards, as cute as the lead couple are (Cora Miao and Russell Wong). There are a few good moments from one of the old fathers (Victor Wong), but mostly it seemed staged and with poor performances, giving the film a rather lightweight feel. The film tips its hat to both Lost Horizon (1937) and The Lady From Shanghai (1947) which was a lovely touch, but just doesn't conjure up the depth of emotion of the scenes from those films. It kept me engaged from beginning to end though, and director Wayne Wang moved things along nicely. I'm glad I saw it, and think it's worth checking out.

We selected this film on the merits of the many famous HK actors involved, so I didn't notice its labeling as a 'comedy' until we got it home. True, it has comedic moments, but so does the Bourne Identity.

The review here also lists the film as Mandarin with English subtitles; it is in Cantonese, with some characters speaking a regional dialect.

The story centers around that period in US history just after WWII where, for the first time, Chinese immigrants were allowed to apply for full citizenship and allowed to bring wives from China; the story follows a young ex-serviceman whose father sends him home to bring back one of the first of these wives. In a few days he's thrust from the club-hopping carefree vet to take his full traditional role as First-Son with all it's trappings and responsibilities, all this on top of he and his wife being one of the first of their kind, a true Chinese-American family.

Put yourself there, you'll agree, this is a lot to heap on a pair of 20-somethings, it wears them down, things fall apart.

It is, in a sense, the same old story, as they say, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl, love always wins, love never loses, put your money on love sort of story, well shot, well put together. It's about an important time in our history while also an important time in all our lives, nothing to shower with awards, but a good story well told and well worth the rental.