1188 Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart

[swo17]

Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart



Wayne Wang's follow-up to his watershed indie Chan Is Missing is a family portrait that gracefully combines the director's signature gentle humanism and eye for poignant detail. Offering another fresh perspective on San Francisco's Chinese American community, Wang takes a bittersweet look at the generational pas de deux between an aging immigrant widow and her devoted daughter, torn between filial duty and her own desires. Soulfully performed by an ensemble including real-life mother and daughter Kim and Laureen Chew and Victor Wong, the Yasujiro Ozu–inspired Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart is as lovingly made as the home-cooked cuisine it celebrates.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• High-definition digital master of a new director's cut, supervised by director Wayne Wang, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• New conversation between Wang and filmmaker and film scholar Arthur Dong
• Interview from 2004 with actor Laureen Chew
• English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by scholar Brian Hu

[Calvin]

I wonder if any of the other films included in the Criterion Channel's recent Asian American 80s series will get disc releases? It'd be great if Criterion picked up Living on Tokyo Time from MGM

[Elizabeth Corday]

Is not heroic trio but Wayne Wang is a master artist. Looking forward to this.

Not sure how it can happen but The Joy Luck Club would be a good Criterion pick.

[beamish14]

Jesus, Wang has now re-edited, I think, 4 of his films

[beamish14]

Not sure how it can happen but The Joy Luck Club would be a good Criterion pick.

With Disney, and they seem to have put a moratorium on licensing their Touchstone titles

[CSM126]

A Little Beaver of Heart

[therewillbeblus]

I didn't care for Chan is Missing, but this is a wonderful interlude of graceful observance bridging Wang's personal, ethnically-informed stylistic fusion of intimate humanistic engagement and perceptive restraint that will be expanded upon in great ensemble pieces like Smoke a decade on. It's a sweet little movie, a welcome sign of generational cultural examination whose ambitions are about the same as The Daytripper's economic offering of a mere slice of life, but a delicious and informative one at that, elisions and all. I admire a film that leans in so comfortably-pointed at the details without becoming gratingly glacial.

[CSM126]

I really loved this. It is very much an Ozu tribute, and it’s so well done that I think it deserves to be compared to a film like Late Spring. Wang and his cast and crew do such a marvelous job of building a world for us. The narrative is hardly as important as finding time for the quiet in-between moments - daughter brushing mother’s hair, family gathering to eat, hanging the laundry out to dry; or even moments with no people at all, such as the pillow shots of billowing curtains, piled shoes, or a sheet swaying on the breeze - and that feels so right. This is a comfortable film, one that lets you feel at home in a life you may never have experienced before. I suppose that’s what I’m chasing after when I watch movies because these are the kind of movies I love the most. What surprised me was that, as gentle as Dim Sum is, when it ended I suddenly burst into tears for a few minutes. This is an ineffably lovely film; I don’t think I can properly explain why it affected me that much but I hope other people feel it when they watch this movie. I guess it’s like the metaphor of a stream - it’s gentle on the surface but there’s so much happening underneath.