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Fri | July 07, 2006

I like my version better

My review of The Motel was finally "published" today... with added cliches ("looms large"?!) that don't even make sense/ aren't even true.

Part of me wants to tell them, but I realize it would be overkill at this point and besides I'm tired of defending every word. I already did some of that-- she emailed me with four changes, all of which I disagreed with, and told her so. I doubted whether I should have insisted on my version, but now I realize that if I hadn't, the article would have come out even worse.

All I have learned from this foray is that as tiring as writing something can be on my own, it's even worse in conjunction with an "editor."

Here is the review I turned in over a week ago (my first review was too short, at 300 words, which is a whole nother story):

The Motel (2005, 72 minutes, color)

The Motel is the coming-of-age story of Ernest Chin (Jeffrey Chyau), a thirteen-year old boy who grows up in the less-than-ideal environment of his family's motel. His mother Ahma Chin (Jade Wu) discourages his development as a writer and puts him to work at the family business, where he regularly encounters prostitutes and other ne'er do wells. Ernest spends his spare time hanging out with his friend Christine (Samantha Futerman, Memoirs of a Geisha), who works nearby at her family's restaurant. When Sam Kim (Sung Kang, Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift) checks into the motel and appoints himself mentor, Ernest begins to confront everything from a mysterious box of fried chicken to the girl of his dreams.

The first shot of the film is quite telling-- Ernest sits on top of a dumpster, chomping on an egg roll. The dumpster, a generally ignored spot in the real world, is a "place" in the film-- it's in the parking lot of the restaurant where Christine works, and he gets to see her when she takes the trash out. Behind the dumpster, they keep a stockpile of porn (which they read with comical, innocent fascination). The dumpster symbolizes all the junk in Ernest's life, and is just one of many telling details in the film.

Viewers like resilient characters, and so it's great to see how well Ernest takes all of the shit that's thrown at him. It goes in and comes out in a more beautiful form. Ernest eats junk food, but his chubbiness, during his close-ups, seems lush and ripe. When he finally makes a move on Christine, his pick up line sounds like it's from a porno magazine. But when he says it, it's not dirty, it's just hilarious.

Sam Kim is another resilient character, who comes to the motel to escape his broken marriage, and yet almost instantaneously gives himself over to spicing up Ernest's life, whether Ernest likes it or not. Sung Kang is perfectly cast as this sexy older-brother figure who has problems of his own. He also gets some of the most quotable lines. "You didn't tell me she was Asian," he says to Ernest when he finds out about Christine. "They're trying to get away from all that. You just remind them of it." It's dubious whether Sam always says the right thing, but there's no doubt that he tries.

Samantha Futerman is great as Christine, the girl who's just a friend. She's a luminous presence and yet still seems like a kid. All the children in the film seem natural, including Alexis Chang as Ernest’s tattle-tale sister Katie.

One key event occurs before the action of the film begins. Ernest writes a story and enters it in a contest without telling his mother. Early in the film he wins honorable mention for this story, and his mother harshly chastises him about it. He continues to dream about the awards dinner, however, and the story, called “The Motel,” is a thread that runs throughout the film and ties it together at the end. The poignancy of the film’s title comes as much from this occasionally glimpsed story as it does from the setting where these characters live.

"The Motel" won the Humanitas Prize, Best Narrative Feature from the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival and Best Dramatic Feature from The San Diego Asian Film Festival.

The Motel plays in New York June 28- July 11 at the Film Forum. Go see this rare Asian-American film!

It's not perfect-- for example I repeat words like "telling" and then "resilient," which some people don't like-- but their revisions trip up the flow, and numerous other things that I don't even want to sit here and list.

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