Film Review #38: RICEBOY SLEEPS

Film Review #38: RICEBOY SLEEPS

*This film review may contain plot spoilers, reader discretion is advised.*

Riceboy Sleeps, directed by Anthony Shim, who also plays a supporting role in the film, is regarded as one of the greatest Canadian movies of 2022, having won top honours at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film breathes fresh life into cinematic depictions of the Asian diaspora by delving into the relationship between a mother, So-Young (Choi Seung-yoon), and her son, Dong-Hyun (Ethan Hwang), who travels to British Columbia, Canada, after his father's demise.

Comparisons with the Oscar-nominated film Minari which dealt with similar elements of the Korean diaspora are bound to arise, especially dealing with thematic assimilation into the new environment. However, from the perspective of a woman juggling between being a father figure for her child and wanting to forget her past, it finds itself interweaving a fresh take on the diaspora element. It would also be fascinating to find out how the film fits in the Canon of Asian-North American diaspora films, such as Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Farewell, The Namesake, and Saving Face, to mention a few significant examples.

Because they are first-generation migrants, their struggles and everyday life become multi-faceted, and their problems are bound to be universal to any type of diaspora, ranging from having to acclimatise to food — in today's globalised era, it is no longer a big issue with the sophisticated interconnectedness — to facing discrimination in the workplace or even in school for the adolescents. As a result, blending in necessitates a lifestyle change. Such precision lends emotional resonance and depth to the narrative's core.

Emphasising the son's unwillingness to be identified as a full-fledged Korean, from wanting to dye his hair blonde in his teens to desiring Canadian food, which lucidly demonstrates how the concept of assimilation carries undercurrents of power dynamics as the original identity is portrayed as out of place and assuming a more comparable identity to their current environment is at the expense of the latter or even more desirable.

Film Still from Riceboy Sleeps (2022)

Patriarchy is still an ongoing negotiation as So-Young educates males to stand up for themselves and even justifies using violence for self-defense as permissible. She utters “A man cries only three times in his life. First, when he’s born. Second, when his mother dies. And last, when his father dies.” Masculinity can be observed from an oriental perspective and this is deeply ingrained in Asian values as parents pass them down to their children. And the gendered perception of masculinity takes on an Asian perspective from this particular vantage point.

Approximately halfway into the film, Shim incorporates the premise of the son's teacher's task of conducting a family tree homework, which naturally prompts Hwang to look back at his Korean lineage and reflect on his own identity.  Compounded by an unexpected consequence, the mother and son return to their hometown. And all the more, the narrative takes a subversion as Seung-yoon and Hwang become foreigners in their own country that they left.