"Nicole Chi Amen, a Costa Rican woman of Chinese descent, has always been on the outside looking in. The opening scene of her moving debut feature replicates this predicament visually: her face pressed against a metal barricade, she looks through a hole in the opaque facade with interest. The camera is observing, too, and the sight of a house being torn down gradually comes into view. This was once the home of her maternal grandmother, a Guangdong native."
"Since neither Amen nor her grandmother speaks the other's native language, a barrier looms large in their relationship. Even guian, the name Amen used to call her grandma, is a linguistic hiccup; the word refers to a paternal grandmother in the Enping dialect, a variation of Cantonese. In fact, miscommunication surrounds Amen wherever she goes. In a revealing sequence stitched together from various taxi rides, she is constantly queried by drivers confused by her multicultural identity. Seemingly innocuous, their prying betrays startling ignorance."
Nicole Chi Amen is a Costa Rican woman of Chinese descent who made a debut feature film after her maternal grandmother's death. The film opens with Amen's face pressed against a metal barricade, watching a house being torn down that was once her grandmother's home. Her maternal grandmother emigrated from Guangdong more than 60 years earlier. Language differences create a persistent barrier between Amen and her grandmother; even the name guian proves linguistically inaccurate in the Enping dialect. Miscommunication follows Amen in Costa Rica and in Guangdong, where she is questioned about her multicultural identity. She discovers belonging in family rituals, ruined architecture, and the film itself serving as a memento of conflicted heritage.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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