If this film’s depiction of millennial relationships reflects reality, I fear for the future of the human race.
They’ll never stop navel gazing long enough to procreate.
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| Ben (Justin H. Min) and best friend Alice (Sherry Cola) try to remain unobtrusive while spying on a mutual acquaintance. |
Adrian Tomine’s script, adapted from his 2007 graphic novel of the same title, focuses on Ben (Justin H. Min), a Berkeley-based, thirtysomething Asian-American plagued by life and career uncertainty. He hopes to become a filmmaker, but that isn’t going anywhere; he earns spending money by managing the Berkeley Arts Cinema, an indie movie theater with more staff than patrons.
In a word, Ben is a jerk: self-absorbed, condescending and stridently arrogant.
He lives with longtime girlfriend Miko (Ally Maki) in a nice apartment funded by her parents; she works for a local Asian American film festival. They squabble a lot, in part because of his roving eye and obsession with blonde women (“white girls,” as Miko complains). Her annoyance is reasonable, but their arguments — about that, and a variety of nit-picky nothings — always devolve into second-guessing, defensive self-justification and needlessly philosophical asides.
Frankly, they’re both tiresome.
Ben fills much of his down time by watching Criterion Collection DVDs and hanging out with best friend Alice (Sherry Cola), a queer grad student who loves hooking up but seems unable to make a relationship last. Even so, she’s quite happy with her own self: at ease in a way that Ben couldn’t even imagine.
Alice also gets the film’s best lines, which Cola delivers with aplomb. My favorite: “Just because I’m a hypocrite, doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
Although clearly unhappy and dissatisfied, Ben seems incapable of change. It’s forced upon him abruptly, when Miko accepts an internship in New York. She practically vanishes overnight, while magnanimously allowing him to continue living in their apartment. (One wonders what her parents think of that.)
Suddenly “free,” Ben now is in a position to explore what he thinks he wants … starting with Autumn (Tavi Gevinson), the blonde recently hired to work at his movie theater. She’s a performance artist, although that latter word must be taken with a grain of salt; her notion of “art” is eye-rollingly outré.
Later to come: the bisexual Sasha (Debby Ryan), currently between relationships.
Ben, forever his own worst enemy, puts his wrong foot forward every time. Perhaps aware that spending 92 minutes with such an ass will test the patience of even the most forgiving viewer, Park and Tomine grant all the other characters plenty of opportunities to tell him off. Ben is willing to accept that from Alice, given that they’re longtime friends, but he’s genuinely surprised by the scathing candor with which everybody else cuts him down to size.
And yet he remains clueless, persisting in his smug belief that he’s always the injured party.
Min bravely inhabits this guy. It can’t be easy — or fulfilling — to play such an unlikeable clod, but he makes this characterization quite persuasive. Heck, I wanted to reach into the screen and smack some sense into Ben.
Cola is a hoot, as previously mentioned; she has great fun with her role. Maki’s Miko is harder to read; at times she seems fond of Ben, but that never lasts. And while it’s easy to argue that Miko deserves a better shot at happiness, we eventually discover that she’s also flawed in a way that makes her less sympathetic.
Jacob Batalon and Scott Seiss are a stitch as theater employees Gene and Lamont, who endlessly debate the virtues of various movies, while also exchanging occasional glances that reveal they don’t think too much of their boss.
Although Ben’s journey drives the plot, Park and Tomine also work hard to illuminate the Asian American experience, in terms of properly acknowledging and honoring both halves of that equation.
They didn’t take the familiar route of conflict between the immigrant generation and their Americanized children; few parents are seen here. This story is more about fitting in, and forging a comfortable path that doesn’t rely on the expectations of others who have their own (often knee-jerk and ignorant) notion of what it means to be Asian American.
That’s a noble endeavor, but Ben is an unlikely delivery system. He’d be a jerk regardless of heritage, which makes it harder to embrace the uniqueness of these characters.
The Berkeley locale is a great backdrop, and the authenticity will be appreciated by viewers familiar with the greater Bay Area. Ultimately, though, one grows tired of spending so much time with such a narcissistic creep.
Whether he’s worth redemption remains an open question. I certainly wasn’t sold.
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