Sometimes
travel is necessary to achieve a better life. This is often the immigrant experience.
For others, travel is just another way of standing still. This is not so
uncommonly the expat experience. It is frequently unclear which kind of travel
applies to the three international couples in Rooth Tang’s Sway (trailer
here),
which is now available on digital VOD platforms.
Arthur,
a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Hong Kong, has been fired off the crew of a
Hollywood movie. At loose ends, he visits his lover in Paris, but his visa expires
soon. Vivian was once a famous teenage TV star in HK, but she has opted for the
relative obscurity of print journalism. She clearly has a serious case of Garbo
syndrome, but she is maybe starting to open up to Arthur, just a bit.
Regardless, convincing to return to HK with him will take some talking.
Meanwhile,
Amanda is struggling to be a good stepmother in America to her Japanese
step-daughter, but Grace makes it difficult. Of course, her expat Japanese
husband is instinctively strict, but Grace really has yet to come to terms with
her mother’s death. Amanda would like to help her with that, but she keeps
getting frozen out. The gossipy expat community is not much help either, but at
least she and her husband really do love each other.
Initially,
Thai couple June and Palm also look like they are deeply in love. However, soon
after their marriage, Palm’s entrepreneurial schemes go up in smoke. Both are
college educated, so June would be happy to settle for an average life as
salary earners, but Palm has a notion to start over in America, even though it
would mean living a subsistence existence as off-the-books workers.
Sway is an absolutely
gorgeous film thanks to the richly evocative cinematography of Lyn Moncrief and
Vasco Lucas Nunes. Arguably, the Parisian storyline is best served by its romantic
look. It also happens to be the strongest of the three and also the one most
responsible for earning Sway comparisons
to Wong Kar-wai. Lu Huang, known for serious films like Blind Massage and Blind Mountain, gives another challenging and disciplined performance, but she
also shows a romantic side we have not seen enough of. Matt Chung-tien Wu is
perhaps even more affecting as Arthur, struggling with his rootlessness.
Together, they develop chemistry in the tradition Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman, but they might be
even more cosmopolitan.
Even
though the Los Angeles segments do not quite have the same dreamy vibe, Kris Wood
Bell, Kazuhiko Nishimura, and Miki Ishikawa all do some remarkably sensitive
and assured work as the step-mother, old dad, and daughter Grace, respectively.
Thanks to this central trio, their storyline also probably ends with the
strongest payoff. Eyes might get a little misty even.
That
leaves the Bangkok arc as the film’s weak link, but to be fair, Sajee Apiwong
is arrestingly poignant, but her best work comes without Ananda Everingham’s
Palm. It is too intangible to pin down why, but somehow their rapport just does
not come together. Still, like the rest of the film, Pang capitalizes on the
picturesque Thai locations.
