Admittedly, I used to be suspicious of Pleasure Experience. The previous few years have seen increasingly more Asian American movies in typical Hollywood genres corresponding to rom-coms, superhero blockbusters, and slow-burn dramas. Many have been glorious, some not a lot, however in a number of of them I’ve seen a recurring theme: a protagonist’s overidealized return to Asia. Pleasure Experience, a new movie about an Asian American adoptee and her associates going to China, appeared primed to replay the trope.
However as I wheezed with shock and laughter 20 minutes into the movie, I understood that it was doing one thing totally different. I felt this much more when Audrey (performed by Ashley Park) lands in China, and exclaims that everybody appears to be like like her. This sense of empowerment from being in a spot the place you’re not, upon first look, as conspicuous a minority is a reasonably typical remark in films about diaspora homecomings. However earlier than Audrey can get too excited, her finest good friend and journey companion, Lolo (Sherry Cola), factors out that the airport has individuals from Taiwan and mainland China, in addition to Okay-pop stars who’re so glamorous, they bypass customs—they usually’re all legibly totally different. Audrey may be tempted to see these Asian faces as interchangeable in order that she will be able to really feel like she belongs; Lolo implies that’s a fantasy, not actuality.
That is additionally a message to the viewers: Pleasure Experience is concerned with acknowledging—after which unraveling—what I’m calling the motherland trope. I’ve significantly seen it in movies of the previous a number of years, the place an Asian American character travels to Asia, although it could possibly exist throughout cultures. Perhaps the protagonist is flying to Singapore to satisfy their rich boyfriend’s household à la Loopy Wealthy Asians (a movie that Pleasure Experience’s director and co-writer, Adele Lim, additionally co-wrote). Maybe they’re on a fantastical superhero mission, as in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Or perhaps they’re busking within the streets of South Korea and falling in love with a neighborhood manic pixie dream lady, as within the quieter indie movie Fiction and Different Realities. Regardless of the motive, the characters use a visit to Asia to grasp themselves. At occasions, the motherland trope will be an efficient construction to carry the emotional transformation of its principal character. However at its worst, it turns Asian nations right into a setting for Asian American protagonists to handle their issues of alienation or loneliness again within the U.S.—however fails to see these nations as locations with their very own complexity or variety. It might begin to really feel like these characters are Eat Pray Love–ing amongst individuals they declare as their very own.
Take a keystone of the motherland trope: the homecoming montage. In Loopy Wealthy Asians, the lead couple, Nick and Rachel, contact down in Singapore and are swept off to an evening market, the place pleasant neighborhood aunties and uncles smile at them whereas deftly making ready scrumptious satays and laksa. In Shang-Chi, the Asian American protagonists play out a thematically similar sequence in Macau, dashing by the neon-lit metropolis, gawking at dancers and distributors on the street. Each movies finish with the second-generation Individuals experiencing profound development: Rachel beneficial properties self-confidence (in addition to a husband), and Shang-Chi turns into a literal tremendous hero.
Upon first look, Pleasure Experience may not appear to be it’s swerving from these broad-strokes plotlines. The story follows Audrey, a Chinese language adoptee to a white household, who goes to China with Lolo and “Deadeye,” her good friend’s cousin. Initially, she’s there for a enterprise deal, however due to Lolo’s goading and some comical circumstances, she finally ends up utilizing the journey to seek out her delivery mom. Pleasure Experience ultimately serves us a tongue-in-cheek model of the acquainted montage the place Audrey appears to simply accept her quest: The gang rides on the again of a truck with locals earlier than Audrey spins round, Sound of Music–fashion, in entrance of a mountain vista, declaring “I really like China!” The sequence culminates in a raucous occasion at Lolo’s grandmother’s residence, the place the prolonged Chinese language household welcome the buddies with open arms.
Nonetheless, Pleasure Experience leans into its over-the-top sensibility and delivers these idealized sequences with a wink and a nudge. The viewer isn’t meant to grasp the “I coronary heart China” montage as a simplistic type of character improvement. As a substitute, it’s a part of the movie’s bigger setup, nudging audiences towards a intestine punch. First, Audrey’s blissful embrace of her private journey is performed comedically, as a mirrored image of her naivete. Then, when she’s lastly getting ready to assembly her delivery mom, she isn’t granted a sweeping realization of self-fulfillment. As a substitute, she’s given stunning information about her heritage that adjustments the very premise of her seek for an identification. Audrey doesn’t return to the U.S. with a handy epiphany, however with extra problems than she left with.
That sense of complicated unfinished enterprise is seen in different movies with comparable arcs that resist idealizing a homeland. Lulu Wang’s The Farewell follows this narrative, as do smaller-scale movies from European Asian filmmakers, corresponding to Davy Chou’s electrical Return to Seoul and Hong Khaou’s Monsoon. The primary distinction between these movies and their flimsier counterparts is their potential to make use of a homecoming as a plot system however pointedly cease wanting suggesting that it’s going to remedy the entire character’s issues. In The Farewell, the story’s focus is much less on what the protagonist’s return to China can provide her, and extra on her navigation of grief throughout borders. In Return to Seoul, an adoptee’s journeys to South Korea are used to take an uncompromising take a look at her ambivalence and recklessness. Monsoon connects its principal character’s eager for residence along with his homoerotic longing. All of those movies refuse to take pleasure in want achievement.
Pleasure Experience isn’t any totally different, and brings a refined knowledge to an in any other case bawdy comedy. Audrey’s core want is for belonging and acceptance. As a substitute of getting her discover it overseas, the movie directs her to look to her associates who stood up for her on the playground or buoyed her by faculty. The concept of a pilgrimage main you proper again to the family members who’ve been there all alongside can also be a typical plotline in a woman’s- or man’s-trip narrative. However given Pleasure Experience’s cultural context, it acts as a intelligent undoing of the motherland trope. Audrey’s associates are her redemption as a result of they’re a part of the identical difficult diaspora and know what it’s prefer to wrestle to belong in particular methods. Lolo’s sex-positive art work is unwelcome within the restaurant that her immigrant dad and mom run; one other good friend, Kat, is desperately playacting celibacy to her extremely non secular Chinese language fiancé regardless of her raunchy faculty previous. These girls in the end needn’t search for some form of mythic belonging—they already belong to at least one one other. By having its characters attain that realization, Pleasure Experience relinquishes the motherland of an obligation to resolve the whole lot, and underlines the transformative energy of the relationships that we name residence as a substitute.
