A Look Behind The Red Doors: Where Tragedy is Comic and Love is Explosive

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Dad's gone mad. Courtesy of www.reddoorsthemovie.com[/CENTER]

by Ada Tseng

Winner of the Best Narrative Feature Award at NY's Tribeca Film Festival, Georgia Lee's Red Doors lives up to the hype. With the hilariously endearing Tzi Ma heading the stellar cast, Red Doors tells the story of a quirky Chinese-American family running around, searching for love, filling the voids, throwing passion into the wind, and just...trying to keep it together.

Georgia Lee's smart and enjoyable debut, Red Doors, revolves around a family living in New York that has grown apart. The Wongs continue to resemble a normal, happy, close-knit family. They love each other, they rely on each other, as dictated by cultural expectation, but in a way, they are strangers to each others' true selves. When they all come together to the dinner table to share an intimiate family moment, something's not quite there -- but they barely even notice. That is, until Dad retires. With no other distractions, he takes a look around and desperately wants to escape this dispassionate life that he no longer recognizes.

Playing the depressed father, Tzi Ma is filmastic proof that sometimes less is more. Mr. Wong obsessively watches the family's old home videos, silently mourning the ghost of the joyful past. His daughters have grown up. They barely speak to him anymore. Gone are the days where they do traditional Chinese ribbon dances and show off their ice-skating for Daddy's video camera. With his puppy-dog eyes and his blatantly pathetic helplessness, Tzi Ma embodies his character's hopeless dejection with almost a child-like confusion, so one can't help but adore him despite himself. We even sympathize that he can't get his act together enough to attempt suicide properly. When Mr. Wong loses it and suddenly abandons his family for the monastery, the family is thrown for a loop -- their once stable, dependable family structure so quickly shattered before their eyes.

Jacqueline Kim plays Samantha, the oldest daughter: a mature, smart, sophisticated, successful businesswoman, who will soon be married -- to a mature, smart, sophisticated successful man. Not just an Asian mother's dream, but every mother's dream. Her life seems to be on track. But, in the midst of her father's breakdown, Samantha has a run-in with an old singer-songwriter flame, and discovers that deep deep inside, she's not as jaded as she pretends to be. This love vs. stability story has been told before, but Jacqueline Kim's combination of effortless grace and stubborn strength results in an interesting, hard-edged character, who brings dignity as well as complexity to her choice.

The middle daughter, Julie, is played by Elaine Kao. In the family, Julie is the people-pleaser; she holds the family together but is content to blend into the background. In comes high-profile actress Mia Scarlett (played by the beautiful Mia Riverton, one of the film's producers), and suddenly the shy girl in the corner is whisked away by this sultry seductress-extraordinaire, who actually appears to be down-to-earth and genuinely care for her. This subplot is the accelerated version of the Saving Face story, but with more pizzazz. Less of the cutesy, innocent nervous hesitation, and more of the can't-keep-their-hands-off-each-other-gotta-have-you-right-here-right-now fire. Kind of exciting, kind of hot. But their wildly opposite lives puts a strain on Julie's belief in Mia's true intentions.

Last but definitely not least, Kathy Shao-Lin Lee plays Katie, the youngest daughter. Taking a cue from Tzi Ma's quiet, understated strength, Kathy manages to steal more than a few scenes herself. Katie, with her hair permanently in punk-ish pigtails, has instigated an impressively elaborate pratical joke war with Simon, her neighbor/ultimate nemesis/undeniable soulmate. It's one of those unacknowledged wars-- both sides experts at playing it cool. They are hilarious, if not insane. As the stakes are raised, dangerous explosives become involved, and neither side will back down at any cost. They have both met their match. It's not often we see so much chemistry through mockery, humiliation, and smug triumph, without either side needing to utter a single word.

Overall, Red Doors is a moving, imaginative film, filled with hope and heart. The character's eccentricities provide the basis for laugh-out-loud humor, and their stories are weaved together skillfully. But even in its silliest moments, it retains a grounding within the complexities of reality. As each character struggles, in their own way, to break free of their ruts, we see them discover passion and intimacy that begins to feed the life back into the family. With Red Doors, director Georgia Lee definitely shows herself to be one to watch.

www.reddoorsthemovie.com