Cinema without borders: Home, hope, and healing Riceboy Sleeps

Express News Service

There’s something heartachingly delightful and funny about the young Korean boy Dong-hyun, who has recently immigrated with his mother So-young to Canada, wanting to change his name to Michael Jordan. Who better to help him belong in an alien world than a universal icon? But the effort to blend in demands more than merely acquiring a Western tag. Like a shift from a lunch box of bibimbap to a pack of sandwiches. Then there are also bits about himself that he can’t quite change: his appearance, for instance.

Riceboy Sleeps, Canadian filmmaker Anthony Shim’s second feature film is loosely based on his own childhood experience of moving with his family from Seoul to a Vancouver suburb. It faithfully showcases the essential immigrant reality of many but also movingly layers it with distinctive subtexts of orphaning, illegitimacy, and persistence of loss, unique to the mother-son duo. So-young is a survivor. Having never known her parents, she has grown up in various orphanages. When she loses her partner and their lovechild is denied citizenship in his own country, she decides to make a final move to secure him a better life in Canada.

There’s as much to identify with their attempts to integrate as there is with their assertion of their identity and culture. The Korean lunch might get dumped in the bin in school to escape the barbs of fellow students, but Dong-hyun will still relish Kimchi for dinner at home. A co-worker’s offensive gesture is rightfully met with a fiery threat from So-young: “You don’t touch me or I’ll kill you”. She is similarly aggressive in fighting racism at her son’s school. She wants her son to fight for himself and not to cry, a sign of weakness, she says. 

Despite these conflicts, she brings up the boy in a personal bubble, never quite answering why he doesn’t have a dad. A class on ancestry and family history and a quote from Maya Angelou—If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going—brings the question of ancestry into focus, pushing the mother and son to take a trip back to their roots in Korea. Much of Riceboy Sleeps is eminently predictable, you can anticipate life throwing a curveball at the mother-son duo. However, Shim makes it work with his low-key, subdued narrative and languorous, long takes. He sides with sensitivity rather than sentimentality. Much as you fear the isolation and loneliness of the two, the journey back home to Korea becomes one of healing and hope.

Despite the cultural specificities, Riceboy Sleeps is also universal at its core. So-young’s experience of single parenthood would be relatable to someone from any culture. How she worries for him even in her own worst moments tugs at your heartstrings. Much as she is the guardian and figure of authority, there’s also a sense of respect in dealing with the child. Shim’s vision is wonderfully realized by the accomplished cast, especially Choi Seung-yoon who, as So-young, is a picture of strength in her fragility, elegance in her ferociousness, tender even when angry. Her fortitude and stoicism despite the unfairness of life lend her persona a tragic dimension.

Riceboy Sleeps joins the list of South Korean migrant narratives in cinema that began catching the world’s eye a couple of years back with Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari and are back in the spotlight now with Celine Song’s Past Lives. All of them tell distinct stories of individual relationships and families in their own unique way, all of them make one wonder about what and where is home and all are similarly imbued with strains of compassion, grace, and gentleness. A genre powered by poignancy.

<br> There’s something heartachingly delightful and funny about the young Korean boy Dong-hyun, who has recently immigrated with his mother So-young to Canada, wanting to change his name to Michael Jordan. Who better to help him belong in an alien world than a universal icon? But the effort to blend in demands more than merely acquiring a Western tag. Like a shift from a lunch box of bibimbap to a pack of sandwiches. Then there are also bits about himself that he can’t quite change: his appearance, for instance.

Riceboy Sleeps, Canadian filmmaker Anthony Shim’s second feature film is loosely based on his own childhood experience of moving with his family from Seoul to a Vancouver suburb. It faithfully showcases the essential immigrant reality of many but also movingly layers it with distinctive subtexts of orphaning, illegitimacy, and persistence of loss, unique to the mother-son duo. So-young is a survivor. Having never known her parents, she has grown up in various orphanages. When she loses her partner and their lovechild is denied citizenship in his own country, she decides to make a final move to secure him a better life in Canada.

There’s as much to identify with their attempts to integrate as there is with their assertion of their identity and culture. The Korean lunch might get dumped in the bin in school to escape the barbs of fellow students, but Dong-hyun will still relish Kimchi for dinner at home. A co-worker’s offensive gesture is rightfully met with a fiery threat from So-young: “You don’t touch me or I’ll kill you”. She is similarly aggressive in fighting racism at her son’s school. She wants her son to fight for himself and not to cry, a sign of weakness, she says. googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

Despite these conflicts, she brings up the boy in a personal bubble, never quite answering why he doesn’t have a dad. A class on ancestry and family history and a quote from Maya Angelou—If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going—brings the question of ancestry into focus, pushing the mother and son to take a trip back to their roots in Korea. Much of Riceboy Sleeps is eminently predictable, you can anticipate life throwing a curveball at the mother-son duo. However, Shim makes it work with his low-key, subdued narrative and languorous, long takes. He sides with sensitivity rather than sentimentality. Much as you fear the isolation and loneliness of the two, the journey back home to Korea becomes one of healing and hope.

Despite the cultural specificities, Riceboy Sleeps is also universal at its core. So-young’s experience of single parenthood would be relatable to someone from any culture. How she worries for him even in her own worst moments tugs at your heartstrings. Much as she is the guardian and figure of authority, there’s also a sense of respect in dealing with the child. Shim’s vision is wonderfully realized by the accomplished cast, especially Choi Seung-yoon who, as So-young, is a picture of strength in her fragility, elegance in her ferociousness, tender even when angry. Her fortitude and stoicism despite the unfairness of life lend her persona a tragic dimension.

Riceboy Sleeps joins the list of South Korean migrant narratives in cinema that began catching the world’s eye a couple of years back with Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari and are back in the spotlight now with Celine Song’s Past Lives. All of them tell distinct stories of individual relationships and families in their own unique way, all of them make one wonder about what and where is home and all are similarly imbued with strains of compassion, grace, and gentleness. A genre powered by poignancy.