Eat a Bowl of Tea
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List Price: $19.98
Features
• Color
• NTSC
In Theaters : 1989
Video Release : 22 October, 1996 |
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Eat a Bowl of Tea Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
I wouldn't eat (or drink) this Tea again!
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The title of this film alludes to a remedy prescribed to one of the characters. If I was to be more specific and explain what the remedy is for I would ruin the plot, so, I won't do that! I will tell you, since I take writing these capsule reviews very seriously that I don't believe that this film is worthy of your time. Based on a novel by Luis Chu, EAT A BOWL OF TEA examines 1940s United States and the Chinese-American experience in this country. Due to a stringent immigration act, all Chinese men coming abroad the USA to seek work were forced to leave their wives behind. Chinese women were not allowed to accompany their husbands, when they came seeking jobs to support their families back home. Thus, the older Chinese men who had settled in this country twenty years before, were aging alone, without the possiblity of bringing first born sons into the world, to continue their familial lineage. In spite of miscygenation laws, Chinese and Chinese-American men would sometimes keep company with Caucasian women, as is depicted in the example of the young main character, Ben Loy (Russell Wong). Ben is sent home to China, by his father, to meet and marry a nice Chinese girl. When he finds her (Cora Miao) and they get married, Loy becomes impotent (one factor possibly being stress--especially, the stress of producing an heir--something that is mandatory in the eyes of Ben's father, as well as their community). This leads to unfortunate circumstances and choices based on frustration and embarrassment.
Why didn't this film work for me? Well, for starters, themes of family obligation, extramarital affairs, and bicultural identity were handled in a very clumsy way and the poor acting certainly didn't help. Russell Wong's delivery of the lines was wooden (at best) and the other characters seemed more like poorly-developed caricatures. What's more, a seduction scene that should have been sexy was more creepy. In fact, more than one of us watching this scene thought that it almost came off more as a rape scene, which was incredibly disturbing. Skip this one. |
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