Shortcomings (R, 92 mins) Streaming on Neon Rentals and Arovision
Directed by Randall Park
Comedy, drama and romance blend beautifully in Shortcomings, with special interest for people who like movies.
Fun is poked at film festivals, filmmaking and how to run, or not run, a cinema under threat of closure.
Actually, it does close, this particular fictional movie theatre in Berkeley, California, freeing up the main character Ben (Justin H Min) who’s been its manager, to chase his girlfriend Miko (Ally Maki) to New York.
The toilet-bowl epistemological art of his jazz punk employee Autumn (Tavi Gevinson) deserves Ben’s laughter, but although Ben’s reaction at that time was understandable, at other times he’s superior, rather tactless and often misses cues.
In essence, he’s a good-looking guy but a very self-absorbed one, incapable of getting out of his own way.
And yet, he’s likeable and we feel for him when one after another, he misreads situations and things backfire on him.
The best thing about the film is the sweet friendship between Ben and his lesbian academic friend Alice (Sherry Cola).
Each of them has commitment-phobia and they share their moans and gripes about their dates in various cafés.
Along with their increasing awareness of their shortcomings in relationships, each of them, as Asians, has an increasing awareness of the shortcomings of the wider population when it comes to understanding what it is to be Asian in America and what being an outsider means.
Adapted from a 2007 graphic novel by Adrian Tomine, Park’s directorial debut is in many ways a typical romcom but its point of difference is that it brings in Asian American identity.
One of Miko’s difficulties with Ben is that he seems to prefer white women, which he strenuously denies (hypocritically), but then the tables are turned and Miko, in New York taking a break from Ben and dating a tall, rich, white man called Leon (Timothy Simons), has to put up with Ben accusing her of dating a “rice king”.
Another recent rom-com adapted from a book, Love At First Sight, based on The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E Smith, relied, as in most rom-coms, on the chemistry of the two stars, The White Lotus’ Hayley Lu Richardson and former EastEnders star Ben Hardy and a lot of clichés that made for comfort viewing.
There’s less focus on chemistry and a lot that’s fresh and different for a rom-com in Shortcomings: a queer house party, an off-the-wall performance art show, a womanising lesbian and somebody being accused of being an Asian fetishist, which is then humorously defined.
The only groan-worthy cliché in Shortcomings is Ben running through the streets of New York for one last meeting with Miko, but that’s prefaced by Ben and Alice talking about Ben not running through the streets of New York for one last meeting with Miko.
Full of humour, a refreshing take on how people form relationships and good shots of the Bay area and New York. Thoroughly heart-warming and enjoyable.
