Kasie
looks fashionable in any clothes, even including traditional purple Korean garb.
Unfortunately, abandonment issues have not worn so well on her. It is painfully
obvious her mother’s desertion has made it acutely difficult for her to let go
of her ailing father, but a potential reconciliation with her semi-estranged
brother could help in Justin Chon’s Ms. Purple, which opens today in New
York.
Sadly,
Kasie’s essentially comatose father has no real quality of life left, but she
still dutifully nurses him. To pay his medical bills, she works as a doumi
hostess in a hedonistic Koreatown karaoke, where she is often forced to accept sex-work
side gigs. When the visiting nurse abruptly quits, Kasie is forced to reach out
to her brother Carey for help. Much to her surprise, he agrees.
As
we see from flashbacks, Kasie was always her father’s favorite, which made
their mother’s abandonment even more difficult for him. Yet, Carey tries to do
right by his dying father. However, he will be even more concerned about the
demeaning treatment Kasie receives, both at work and from her playboy lover,
Tony.
Ms.
Purple is
certainly not a slam-bang kind of film. Far from plotty, it is a quiet, moody
character study, with a vibe and sensibility not so very different from vintage
Hou Hsiao-hsien (Millennium Mambo being a particularly apt comparison). Hou
is quite the name to invoke, but Chon’s assured hand warrants the guarded
comparison. However, Chon’s film has a much harder edge, especially when it
comes to depicting the harsh realities of sex-related work.
Like
Hou had Shu Qi in Mambo, Chon has the advantage of a luminously expressive
star turn from his lead, Tiffany Chu, who is utterly arresting and absolutely
devastating. The quietly understated sibling rapport she and Teddy Lee forge
together is also eerily potent. From time to time, Octavio Pizano provides some
relief from the melancholy atmosphere with his memorably idiosyncratic
portrayal of his name-sake Octavio, a smitten former co-worker, who would
probably be good for Kasie.
Ms.
Purple is
smaller in scale than Chon’s electric directorial debut, Gook, but it is
still a worthy follow-up. The themes are more universal this time around, but
Chon and co-screenwriter Chris Dinh (Crush the Skull) squarely center
them in the Korean American first- and second-generation experiences. In a
departure from the black-and-white of Gook, cinematography Atne Cheng dramatically
saturates the colors, but in ways that complement the lonely, after-hours ambiance.
Highly recommended for those who can handle some raw, straight-no-chaser
sibling drama, Ms. Purple opens today (9/13) in New York, at the Quad.
