Hiroshi Watanabe as Jimmy and Nae as his sister Aiko in director Dave Boyle’s independent film “White on Rice.”
Erin and I attended a screening tonight of a new movie, “White on Rice,” sponsored by Denver’s Asian Avenue Magazine at the Starz Film Center, and thoroughly enjoyed the film. It’s a sweet romantic comedy about an affable doofus of a Japanese man, 40-year-old Hajime “Jimmy” Beppu, who leaves Japan when his wife divorces him, and moves in with his sister and her husband and son in America. A hapless loser, Jimmy’s reduced (when he’s not living in a park or in his company’s broom closet) to sharing his young nephew’s bunk bed and pining after his brother-in-law’s niece Ramona, who also moves in with the family.
“White on Rice” pokes gentle fun at Japanese cultural values and personalities (the gruff, the clowny, the servile) but does it with respect, never lowering itself down to parody or worse, stereotype.
The movie’s chockfull of Asian Americans in addition to the rich portrayals of the Japanese characters: Jimmy’s employer,a customer service company, has several Asian Americans, including Jimmy’s friend Tim, played by James Kyson Lee of “Heroes” fame, who ends up being Ramona’s love interest, thwarting Jimmy’s obsession. The ensemble cast, which includes Hiroshi Watanabe as Jimmy, Japanese actress Nae as Jimmy’s sister Aiko, Mio Takada as Aiko’s husband, Lynn Chen (viewers may recognize her from “Saving Face”) as Ramona, and very young Justin Kwong as the strange and wonderfully straight-faced kid Bob.
The cast is mostly Asian and Asian American. Almost half the dialogue is in Japanese with subtitles. And, the co-writer and director, Dave Boyle, is a 27-year-old Mormon Caucasian from Provo, Utah.
“Yeah, that’s always the first question people ask,” he said tonight after the screening. “So, what’s with the white guy making a movie about Asians?” Continue reading
Note that I said Asian Americans, not Asians. The great thing about Kylie and the new faces of Asian American Pacific Islanders on the small screen is that they have my face, and my voice — which is to say, they don’t have accents and clearly aren’t foreigners.
I’ve seen emails criss-crossing the Internet, and a couple of blogs mentioning this, but I just got an email directly from UT-Texas asking for help, so I thought I should post about this. Dr. Eun-Ok Im (left), an internationally known expert in cross-cultural women’s health issues at the University of Texas at Austin, needs subjects for a health study — and you don’t need to live in Austin to participate.
I realize that when I point out how something as seemingly benign as the “won ton” font bugs me, readers might think I’m being petty and overly sensitive. But I hope those readers will respect my opinion if something does piss me off. Plus, I hope everyone can understand why certain things are just plain offensive to Asian Americans, not as a result of over-sensitivity but simply because they’re racist stereotypes.
