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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Comedy > Dim Sum - A Little Bit Of Heart

Dim Sum – A Little Bit Of Heart

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C+     Film: B-

 

 

Wayne Wang made such an impact with his classic Chan Is Missing (reviewed elsewhere on this site) that a follow-up was not going to be easy.  Dim Sum – A Little Bit Of Heart (1985) trades black and white for color and some of the sharper points of the previous film for some melodrama, something that would become more so in Wang’s later hit The Joy Luck Club.  Fortunately, this film is deeply interested in once again showing a story about the Chinese-American community like no film before had.

 

The story is about a mother-daughter relationship and how old values and a new way of life cause conflict.  The mother (Kim Chew) believes she is fated to die and her daughter Geraldine (Laureen Chew) will marry the wrong person and not retain any of the values and traditions she brought over from China, increasing the feelings of dread and death.  Fortunately, enough of the story and supporting characters do not allow this to drop into outright melodrama because this is not the typical “1980s happy family/everything is going to be fine” phony mall movies we kept getting over and over again until a new dysfunction formed across the country.  Terrel Seltzer’s screenplay is not bad and is rare in this genre for accomplishing anything, but the film is over all unsatisfying despite taking us places we have never been with people we have never met before.  It is still worth a look or revisit, as is the short included in the extras.

 

The letterboxed 1.85 X 1 image is not bad and has its moments of good color, but based on the good print, the definition would have been better if this were an anamorphic presentation.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono shows its age and is not any better or worse than Chan Is Missing.  Extras include the Dim Sum – Take Out short that was made as a follow-up to the feature, an introduction to the short, trailers for other Koch Lorber DVDs and an interview with star Laureen Chew.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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