Better Luck Tomorrow: a work in progress

This would be the dream of many independent producers: make a movie on a shoestring budget, wait till it makes news at a major festival, hope for a bit of controversy and sell it to a major company. Then slowly watch it expand its run across the country.

This came true for director Justin Lin's second feature film Better Luck Tomorrow. Its production cost, at $250,000, is small even by most independent films' standards. 

Lin's first film was the very low budget Shopping For Fangs, which he co-directed with his film school friend, Quentin Lee.

Better Luck Tomorrow, a favourite at Sundance Film Festival last year, got a bit of flak when some people criticised it for being too negative about Asian Americans. In this case, it is mostly the Chinese.

Its supporters found it a funny and corrosive study of the pressure-packed lives of Los Angeles suburban high school students. They are gangsters with perfect SAT scores.

The film revolves around seemingly bright Asian students perceived as a model minority. While their parents, teachers and classmates perceive them as super-achievers, they are, in fact, first-rate scam artists and thieves. They seem to have perfected the art of conning the admission process in Ivy League schools too.

Most of the film, which steadily veers towards violence, is told through the experiences of its young characters.

The most impressive star among the young cast is Parry Shen as Ben. He slowly becomes notorious among his peers and classmates. But his notoriety cannot help him win Stephanie (Karin Anna Cheung), the alluring cheerleader. Though she confides in him and uses his shoulder to cry on, she is fonder of the two-timing student Steve (John Cho).

Ben's passion for Stephanie and dislike of Steve drives the movie's plot, leading to an open but unsatisfactory ending.

Shen, who is seen earlier in the movie as a doormat-geek, assumes a complex personality as the movie continues. We are not exactly sure in the end where his character is headed, or if he can ever find redemption.

Despite extracting good performances from his artistes and keeping the film interesting, Lin missed creating a debut epic. What he needed was a better script and better pacing.

How could a Chinese American director make a film slamming his own community, Lin's critics asked.

If white people can make films criticising their own community, Asian American filmmakers should have the right to examine their own community, argued Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times.

The movie, which was picked up by MTV, one of the most unlikely channels to show a film of its nature, drew the attention of another division of the parent company, Viacom. It is now distributed by Paramount Classics.

It opened in 13 theatres in America last week, grossing a healthy $480,000. This weekend, it has doubled the theatre count. At the current rate, it should be able to recoup its negative cost in just 10 days.
 
Raw and predictably short on production values, Better Luck Tomorrow feels like a work in progress. Yet one cannot deny it is a powerful, effective and emotional film.