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MS. PURPLE
Director: Justin Chon Cast: Tiffany Chu, Teddy Lee, Octavio Pizano, James Kang, Ronnie Kim, Alma Martinez MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:27 Release Date: 9/6/19 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 5, 2019 One of the central relationships of Ms. Purple, between a daughter and a father, is clearly a codependent one. It's based on the father's feeling of loneliness and the child's desire to be a good, faithful daughter. This is sad enough, but the screenplay by director Justin Chon and Chris Dinh adds another, despairing layer of melancholy to this relationship: Throughout the course of this story, only the daughter is conscious. She's Kasie (Tiffany Chu), a second-generation immigrant living in Los Angeles with her father (played by James Kang). The father is bedridden and in a coma—the result of an unspoken disease. These are the man's final months, weeks, or even days, but despite multiple people's advice, Kasie refuses to put her dad into hospice care. To keep her father alive, she works at a karaoke bar, where men treat her like a servant or worse, and has a caddish "boyfriend" named Tony (Ronnie Kim), who gives her money every month. When the father's day nurse quits, Kasie calls upon her older brother Carey (Teddy Lee) for help in their father's care. The son left home when he was 15, a few years after the siblings' mother left their father for a new life, leaving Kasie as the only person in the father's life. The reluctant brother, unemployed and irresponsible, agrees. Through flashbacks, Chon and Dinh reveal how these bonds were broken, set, and, in the case of the son/brother, broken again. In the present, Kasie keeps working her belittling job, playing along with the terrible guy, and ignoring any potential for a better life (A valet at the club, played by Octavio Pizano, represents that last part in a slightly patronizing way). That's the kind of daughter her father taught her to be—perhaps without even realizing it. Meanwhile, Carey pushes his father's inevitable deathbed around town, if only so he can temporarily escape the place that was once a home. The siblings re-form their relationship over shared memories, although the good ones are minimal. The filmmakers obviously understand these characters, and because of that, the film presents them and their fractured relationships without an ounce of judgment. By the end of Ms. Purple, we have a clear comprehension of how this family arrived at such an unhealthy place, but we also don't feel the need or want to blame any of them for it. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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