FILM REVIEW - "Blue Bayou": maybe bring a box of tissues for this one
By the time the credits roll on Blue Bayou, you’d be hard pressed to find a dry eye in the house. Not least for the emotional story and tragic circumstances, but the real life predicament that immigrants face when they get sucked into the black hole of the Immigration Customs Enforcement unit, or ICE. A system that forcibly enacts deportation on undocumented citizens regardless of how long they’ve been in the country, or the ties they have to their birthplace. This is the story Blue Bayou tries to tell. Though albeit heavy-handed in parts, the film uses this predicament as its centrepiece and thanks to the performances of Justin Chon, Alicia Vikander and Sydney Kowalske, largely succeeds.
Antonio LeBlanc, played by Justin Chon, who also wrote and directed Blue Bayou, is an Korean immigrant who came to America when he was three years old. He’s now a thirty-five year old man, living with his pregnant wife Kathy (Alicia Vikander), and his step-daughter, Jessie (Sydney Kowalske) who he dotes on incessantly. Despite Antonio’s struggle with money and his dead-end job as a tattoo artist, their lives are peaceful and free, devoted to quality time in the beautifully shot streets of New Orleans. Antonio and Jessie share a particularly special bond as Jessie now considers Antonio her only ‘real’ father, as her biological father, Ace (Mark O’Brien), a domineering and possibly corrupt police officer, abandoned her and her mother when she was young.
The dreamlike early shots of domestic bliss and peaceful meditation on nature and family, grind to a halt when during an unfortunate altercation, played out with unsettling cruelty and malice, Ace and his boorish, thug-like, caricature of a bad-cop partner Denny (a massively overdone Emory Cohen), arrest Antonio and cart him off for a brief stint in lockup. This brief stint becomes a far more serious issue when Antonio finds out his foster parents didn’t file his adoption papers correctly and now he faces imminent deportation. Facing down the barrel of the unforgiving bureaucratic nightmare that is ICE, Antonio desperately tries to keep his family together, defy the system and stay in the country that is all he has known since he was three years old.
Amidst all this drama and conflict, there is a curious and at times interesting subplot involving a Vietnamese-born woman named Parker (a mysterious and otherworldly Linh Dan Pham). Antonio befriends Parker during an impromptu tattoo session, and Parker begins to educate and enlighten Antonio about the importance of heritage, the closeness of family, and the embrace of different cultures. Her inclusion in the film adds a dimension that offsets Antonio’s mad dash to stay in the country. She is calm and wise, and softly poetic in her musings about the importance of life. She also has cancer and knows she will die soon. Her tragic, yet pacifying nature gently guides Antonio to a place of self-acceptance, his own oriental heritage a reality he chooses to ignore and cover-up as best he can.
All this seems a lot to unpack and indeed, the various strands of plot do occasionally lead to some pacing issues and clutter. However, issues I found to be negligible, with the strength of the acting and the dialogue so compelling and real, especially from Chon, Vikander and Kowalske, that the films strengths are more than enough to outweigh its flaws. The chemistry between Chon and Kowalske feels instantly palpable, and their sense of closeness and warmth, life-affirming. The music can at times come across heavy-handed or intrusive at times and Parker’s frequent allusions to her favourite flower as a stand-in for heritage lacks a subtlety and nuance that might take away from some of the more potent political messages. But I digress.
Ultimately these issues don’t impede the emotional grind of the narrative or the very real stakes facing Antonio and his beloved family. There might be a few problems but the intensity of the drama, the talented cast, and the ambition in Justin Chon’s vision all contribute to one of a hell of an emotional ride. Like I said, you’d be hard-pressed to find a dry in the house after this one.
Three and a half stars.
