Film Review: GO BACK TO CHINA
GO BACK TO CHINA, 2020, CREDIT: GRAVITAS VENTURES
For everyone who loved Crazy Rich Asians, this will amuse and delight. This satirical family culture clash between traditional and western values centers on a spoiled, rich Chinese 20-something brought up in Los Angeles. She has just graduated from fashion design school and is looking for a job. Sasha is thoroughly Americanized and massively entitled as she swans around in her expensive designer outfits eschewing the notion of internships as “legalized slave labor” and ignoring repeated phone calls from her father in China. Teddy, her estranged father has been lobbying for her return to China to help out with the family toy business. Teddy, a serial adulterer, dumped Sasha and her mother, May when she was very young and moved them to LA where he continued to support them both. He has been completely absent from their lives since his gold-plated abandonment. Teddy has bequeathed to Sasha a million dollar trust fund, which she has been frivolously squandering for a year since graduation with no job in sight.
GO BACK TO CHINA, 2020, CREDIT: GRAVITAS VENTURES
Sasha would rather die than return to a China which she barely remembers and does not relate to at all. When his calls go unanswered she finds her credit cards cancelled and her bank account closed and threats to cut off her mother as well if she does not heed the call. With no alternative available she reluctantly, filled with dread and resentment, returns to China. To her utter amazement, she is picked up by her father’s limo and delivered to his preposterously lavish home inhabited by all manner of unknown half siblings and his current “care giver”, a 20-something girl named Lulu and her younger brother. Besides her father, the only person she has ever met is her older half-sister Carol, whom she barely knows and has not seen in years. It seems that Teddy is repopulating China single-handedly – something that only the very wealthy can get away with in China. Not a great start. But she is a very plucky girl with a wry sense of absurdity.
GO BACK TO CHINA, 2020, CREDIT: GRAVITAS VENTURES
Teddy’s deal with Sasha is one year at the factory and her money will be restored. He has some peculiar notion of familial obligation that is completely at odds with his history of making and abandoning families. It seems that he has corralled Carol into working at the factory for the last 10 years. In a somewhat predictable series of events Sasha finds her way into this enforced servitude and is able to make herself useful in unexpected ways which wins back her father’s affection as well as his respect. Teddy is an ill-tempered autocratic boss who intimidates his staff and underlings. Sasha is able to influence him in ways that benefit his workers and wins their affection. In short, the experience is very positive for Sasha and serves her well. Family secrets are revealed, grievances are aired and ultimately resolved.
GO BACK TO CHINA, 2020, CREDIT: GRAVITAS VENTURES
Loosely based on Emily Ting’s own story, it has enough empathy for the characters to make it charming and entertaining without the hard edge of a film about class inequality like Parasite. It skewers the rich with a velvet sword and enough humanity to make it easy to swallow. There are some very comic charicatures and excellent performances by the whole ensemble. In particular Anna Akana who plays Sasha is as good as Akwafina in Crazy Rich Asians with her expressive face which shifts with alacrity registering a full range of emotions. Beautiful production, cinematography and a jaunty soundtrack make for an enjoyable experience.
