CIFF: “Riceboy Sleeps” - Film Review
It’s immediately obvious that Riceboy Sleeps is deeply personal to writer/director Anthony Shim. There’s a gentleness to the way he introduces So-Young (Choi Seung-yoon), the film’s single mother who is loosely based on his own mother. She was orphaned in South Korea and forced to grow up quickly in order to keep herself alive. When she was older, she met the man who would become her husband. They fell in love, got married, had a son, and then suddenly So-Young is alone again. Her husband kills himself after a particularly intense episode of schizophrenia. She takes her son, Dong-Hyun (Dohyun Noel Hwang), to Canada and starts anew once again.
Riceboy Sleeps takes the audience back to 1990s Vancouver and shows the difficulty both So-Young and Dong-Hyun have in fitting into their new lives. Dong-Hyun is teased by his classmates for his lunches, the shape of his eyes, and anything else they deem “different” about him. So-Young works at a factory and feels isolated until she meets another worker from South Korea. They bond over their culture and the food they miss from home. The film then skips nine years to when Dong-Hyun is sixteen (now played by Ethan Hwang). The relationship between So-Young and Dong-Hyun shifts in the way all parent-child relationships do, but there’s something more intense between them as Dong-Hyun is desperate to learn more about his father.
It’s surprising, in the best way, that Riceboy Sleeps is only Shim’s second feature film. His command and vision of the film are staggering. Riceboy Sleeps is primarily composed of long shot, single takes that subvert the standard rhythm of a film. Audiences are used to the shot/reverse shot style of filmmaking. If a scene has two characters in it, a standard film would shoot both actors delivering their lines, along with coverage (each of the actors reacting to what the other is saying). Riceboy Sleeps instead dances gracefully through the scenes with the camera’s focus primarily settling on So-Young. There could be another actor in a scene who is delivering the bulk of the lines, but Shim is unrelenting in his field of view.
Shim also plays with the camera’s aspect ratios. When the characters are in Canada, it’s a tighter focus, a 4:3 ratio. This speaks to the confinement and general uncomfortable feelings So-Young and Dong-Hyun have in this new country. When the story travels to South Korea, the ratio expands, almost as though the film is exhaling the breath it was holding while in Canada. The mountains and the rice fields are sprawling, so different from the smallness of their life back “home.”
Riceboy Sleeps questions the ideas of home and identity. These are likely questions that are familiar to first-generation immigrants and their children. Is home the country you’ve moved to or the one you left? Can they both be home or do you need to make a decision? Finding the balance of the life that’s gone and the one that’s starting haunts So-Young and Dong-Hyun throughout the film. It’s especially difficult for So-Young because she grew up in South Korea and has real memories of her life there, but Dong-Hyun left when he was six, so his memories are blurry at best. Does that mean he cannot miss it? It’s another question that plagues Dong-Hyun as he grows into his painful teenage years.
Home is a transient, liminal, and ever-changing place. Riceboy Sleeps is Shim’s way of creating an eternal version of the life he had with his mother. This film is a home that can welcome others with a similar story and allow them to find solace in his reflection on his childhood. Even those who don’t have the same story as Shim will be swept up in the authenticity he and his actors have put on screen. Riceboy Sleeps is magical, hopeful, and beautiful in its simplicity.
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