Eric Lin’s “Rosemead” begins when Lucy Liu, enjoying a widow who runs a print store in Southern California, coughs a bit. So we instantly know she’s acquired terminal most cancers. In the event you’re coughing in a film and also you’re not in a room stuffed with smoke, and it’s not already established that you simply’ve acquired a chilly, it means you’re dying from most cancers. I don’t make the principles, I simply know them by coronary heart. It’s like when any girl throws up in a film, they usually’re not drunk they usually didn’t get meals poisoning, it means they’re pregnant. Each. Single. Time.
In “Rosemead,” Lucy Liu performs Irene. Her husband died a pair years in the past. Irene is dying now. Her teenage son Joe (Lawrence Shou) has schizophrenia and isn’t taking his meds. Additionally, he’s obsessive about college shootings. This isn’t a movie the place good issues occur. This movie is bleakness personified.
If “Rosemead” wasn’t primarily based on a real story, the filmmakers would most likely get accused of laying it on too thick. Because it stands, one may be tempted to offer them a go, however then once more, they’re those who selected this materials. They needed to inform a heavy-handed, tragic story about distress, and in addition some distress, and in addition extra distress. In the event you can imagine it, Irene’s story really will get more durable to observe from there. My god, what a nightmare.
Right here in Los Angeles we have now a program on the American Cinematheque yearly known as, “Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair.” It’s a movie competition that solely reveals the saddest motion pictures ever made, like John McNaughton’s “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” and Isao Takahata’s “Grave of the Fireflies.” It’s been going sturdy for 4 years, so there’s clearly an viewers for movies like “Rosemead.” You might or might not be in that viewers. You most likely already know if you’re.
Possibly mainstream audiences are spoiled. Possibly too many American movies are cheerful, escapist entertainments. Possibly mass-produced artwork shields us from life’s harshest realities, and as such, fails to organize us for when our personal lives flip bitter. Movies like “Rosemead” are a splash of ice water in our smiling faces — grim, fatalistic reminders that right here, however for the grace of caprice, we go. I’ll give Eric Lin’s film credit score: It’s making me take into consideration the place grim and punishing artwork has, not simply in our lives, but in addition within the market. Somebody folks need to pay to be unhappy. Like the nice Sally Sparrow stated, disappointment is “blissful for deep folks.”
However past the distress, and pity, and the ugly sense of reduction we get that our lives (hopefully) aren’t this grim, what are we imagined to get out of “Rosemead?” It’s a really particular tragedy, and Marilyn Fu’s screenplay goes out of its approach, principally, to keep away from any suggestion that there’s a sweeping message. There’s a hazard in not elevating consciousness however there’s a hazard in elevating consciousness by scare techniques and scapegoats, and “Rosemead” arguably blurs that line, though most likely unintentionally.
Faculty shootings are a pervasive, surprising drawback and all of us want we may do one thing to forestall them (not that our authorities is attempting something). Irene is conscious of the hazard and needs to keep away from the looming catastrophe, however Joe’s warning indicators — disturbing pictures in notebooks, web browser histories with Wikipedia pages about different killers, in addition to gun outlets — are all wrapped up in his schizophrenia, which is omnipresent all through the narrative.
When Irene talks to Dr. Hsu (James Chen) about her fears, he’s fast to level out that “most individuals with schizophrenia don’t have interaction in violence, the truth is it’s fairly uncommon.” That’s what he’s telling us, however not what the movie is exhibiting us. We see no examples in “Rosemead” of individuals dwelling with schizophrenia who aren’t a critical hazard to themselves and others. And to be frank, Dr. Hsu doesn’t appear to be doing an important job, so all of the onerous work falls to Irene, who’s ill-equipped for 1,000,000 causes, and her answer to Joe’s drawback is… dangerous. Let’s simply name it dangerous. So Dr. Hsu isn’t precisely wowing us along with his grasp on the state of affairs, and the movie’s one paltry try and consciously keep away from linking schizophrenia to highschool shootings isn’t almost as convincing because it positively ought to be.
There’s an argument to be made that “Rosemead,” as frank as it’s about emotional horrors (and different horrors as nicely) doesn’t do an important job of justifying its assault on the viewers’s sense. It’s an efficient assault, little question about that, and Lucy Liu dives headlong into this abject anguish with an open coronary heart and loads of ability. I don’t know almost sufficient about schizophrenia to guage whether or not Lawrence Shou is precisely conveying the expertise to the viewers, so I’ll yield the ground if any specialists that need to share their judgment, however he’s totally dedicated to the movie, I can say that a lot. In consequence he’ll most likely make you unhappy as hell. Which was certainly his job.
Is “Rosemead” a superb film? I’m undecided I’d go that far. It turns our hearts the wrong way up, and that’s by design, so if nothing else it’s purposeful. However I’m not satisfied it has sufficient to say about its sorrow, or that it has any useful concepts about how we, the viewers, can do about it. We simply don’t have sufficient management over our psychological and bodily well being to fully keep away from these circumstances in our personal lives, as unlikely as they’re to occur once more in precisely this manner.
I suppose we’re simply imagined to not do no matter Irene does, though what Irene does was important sufficient — for worse, positively not for higher — to get memorialized in a film. Which could not be one of the best ways to have a look at it, nevertheless it’s an interpretation “Rosemead” leaves open, so I’m afraid I’ve to name it. Nevertheless miserable “Rosemead” is, and it’s miserable in all italics, it’s simply not deep sufficient to make operating this gauntlet worthwhile.
