LAAPFF 2012: YES, WE'RE OPEN

A scene from Yes, We're Open.

Closed for good

By Miranda Inganni

Monogamy is overrated. At least according to self-proclaimed “modern” couple Sylvia (Lynn Chen) and her boyfriend, Luke (Parry Shen), in director Richard Wong’s new film Yes, We’re Open.

Mistaking pseudo rebellion for radical social awareness, when not professing their love for each other, Sylvia and Luke contemplate the potential realities of what polygamy would actually mean to them in terms of being modern. (For the record, only hipsters of the silliest sort would be this obsessed with portraying the modern lifestyle.)

Their presumed coolness is put to the test when they meet Elena (Sheetal Sheth) and her partner, Ronald (Kerry McCrohan), at a mutual friends’ dinner party.

This encounter leads to another meeting between the two couples, setting of a sexual experiment preoccupation for Luke and Sylvia as both individuals and as a couple. Do they fuck the couple (maybe a threesome)? Each is granting the other permission to do so, but do they mean it, and what happens if they go through with it?

Considering the film's subject matter, Wong has an opportunity to push some contemporary buttons, but holds way back. For starters, for all the sex that Yes, We’re Open seems to champion, there is barely any flesh. It is not that there has to be nudity, but the film is shot (by Seng Chen) in an extremely modest, practically prudish way. Moreover, Wong and screenwriter HP Mendoza’s narrative is strictly linear and downright bourgeois. There is nothing radical about the film’s storytelling.

Shot in San Francisco, a place sexually permissive by U.S. standards, Yes, We’re Open wants to be a flirty, fun film. And Chen and Shen do admirable jobs personifying a couple contemplating temptation, but the film doesn’t go far enough. In fact, it takes a rather conservative turn by film’s end. The institution of marriage they so bravely mock in the beginning of the film is embraced happily ever after before the final credits roll.

Sylvia and Luke (and the filmmakers) like to talk a good line or two, but they certainly don’t like crossing it.


The Los Angeles Pacific Asian Film Festival screens Yes, We're Open, tonight, 9 p.m., DGA 1; and May 19, 9:30 p.m., Art Theater of Long Beach. For more information: LAAPFF.

AGLIFF 2011: LULU SESSIONS

Dr. Louise Nutter in LuLu Sessions.

Close to the heart

By Don Simpson

A hard-drinking, chain-smoking, world-renowned cancer researcher with a tender heart and a mouth like a sailor, Dr. Louise Nutter -- a.k.a. LuLu -- discovered a new anti-cancer drug right around the same time that she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. The LuLu Sessions' writer-director (plus, to mention producer and cinematographer) S. Casper Wong was on her way to videotape a friend’s wedding in San Francisco when LuLu asked her to accompany her to her biopsy in Minneapolis. As fate would have it, the wedding was canceled and Wong opted to stay in Minneapolis with Lulu.

Turning the camera toward LuLu, Wong documents the last 15 months of LuLu’s life. The camera documents as LuLu receives the dreaded diagnosis from her oncologist -- judging by Lulu's reaction this is not a reenactment. We observe several key moments during LuLu's treatments, but we also witness the ebbs and flows of Wong's intense relationship with LuLu. Shooting in the cinema verite tradition, Wong suddenly becomes one of the primary subjects in her own documentary.

Not only does The LuLu Sessions explore the transformations in a person while they anticipate a rapidly approaching death, but Wong's film also blurs the definition of same sex relationships. LuLu and Wong share emotions that transcend most platonic relationships. Wong shares an intense bond with LuLu, but it remains unclear if their relationship ever becomes sexual. Then again -- who cares? Why does our society always need to define people and their relationships?