Coming Home Again (2019)
(Wayne Wang, US/South Korea 2020, DCP, 86 min.)
Director Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club, Smoke) returns with this story based on a 1995 New Yorker personal essay by Chang-rae Lee. Chang-rae (Justin Chon) returns to his San Francisco home to care for his ailing mother (Jackie Chung). While preparing a traditional Korean New Year’s Eve dinner (taught to him over the years by his mother), Chang-rae has time to reflect on his time as her caretaker. Confronting society’s expectations of a son and his mother’s expectations of his career to her own detriment, Chang-rae needs to forge his own path to happiness, tying in his distant father and his absent sister. An intimate film about generational separation and healing, the film continues to return to food and its preparation (all prepared for the film by acclaimed Korean-American chef Corey Lee).