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There's always been plenty of drama in the narrative category of The American Dream -- especially when that dream becomes increasingly elusive. In times of despair, get-rich-quick promises wait in the wings, driving people to see shifty marketing programs as potential lottery tickets, with fortune just a day away. Tze Chen places his quiet three-character story in this tornado of complexity, commenting on economic hopelessness and getting touching performances from two pint-size leads.
Children of Invention is ultimately a sad film, but one that usually avoids the easy route toward its emotion. Siblings Raymond and Tina (Michael Chen and Crystal Chiu) are Chinese-American kids with a single mom and very little else beyond their aspirations. Even before the film's title appears onscreen, the pair deal with a home eviction, sitting outside on the family couch with their belongings on the curb. It's the capper to a surprisingly emotional opener, introducing the kids and their troubled mom Elaine (Cindy Cheung, Lady in the Water), who's fresh from getting ripped off selling vitamins for a questionable company.
Elaine's obsession with potential sales opportunities doesn't stop, and she's soon working for another firm whose structure screams of a pyramid scheme. Cheung plays well into the stereotype of the starry-eyed hard-working Asian-American, plugging along like a trooper without overselling the ethos. She gives Elaine likable selling skills and a painful level of naiveté -- both wholly believable. And if these traits seem cliché, Chen answers that with a character explaining the Chinese point-of-view, lamenting that so many of her kind are always trying to get ahead fast.
On the smallest scale, the victims of Elaine's plight are her kids, a boy and girl with a work ethic identical to Mom's, but without the tenderness and attention they so desperately need. On a larger scale, Chen sees an entire subculture as the victims, immigrants (some living in the US illegally) lured into a false sense of American security, chasing a carrot which never sits within reach. Of course, there's a part of the economy -- from ripoff artists to law enforcement -- that benefits, an irony not lost on Chen's subtly drawn environment.
The story takes on another layer when Elaine runs into trouble and doesn't return home one evening. Gradually and carefully, Chen builds a story of survival for the creatively resourceful Raymond and Tina, whose own invention, so to speak, takes them onto the streets of downtown Boston with mom's whereabouts unknown. Chen keeps the danger and sadness at bay, instead giving us two fairly developed kid characters. In their own ways, each straddles the line between the abstract and the pragmatic, separately imagining a world where a million dollars is within their reach.
That feeling of history repeating is the real tragedy at the heart of Children of Invention, and Chen has love and care in the telling, poetry in the form of exposition and dialogue. When a plot point or two feels uncomfortably convenient, Chen seems aware of it and rolls with it. It's a confidence he should take to further stories, sharper scripts, bigger ambitions.
Children of Invention is ultimately a sad film, but one that usually avoids the easy route toward its emotion. Siblings Raymond and Tina (Michael Chen and Crystal Chiu) are Chinese-American kids with a single mom and very little else beyond their aspirations. Even before the film's title appears onscreen, the pair deal with a home eviction, sitting outside on the family couch with their belongings on the curb. It's the capper to a surprisingly emotional opener, introducing the kids and their troubled mom Elaine (Cindy Cheung, Lady in the Water), who's fresh from getting ripped off selling vitamins for a questionable company.
Elaine's obsession with potential sales opportunities doesn't stop, and she's soon working for another firm whose structure screams of a pyramid scheme. Cheung plays well into the stereotype of the starry-eyed hard-working Asian-American, plugging along like a trooper without overselling the ethos. She gives Elaine likable selling skills and a painful level of naiveté -- both wholly believable. And if these traits seem cliché, Chen answers that with a character explaining the Chinese point-of-view, lamenting that so many of her kind are always trying to get ahead fast.
On the smallest scale, the victims of Elaine's plight are her kids, a boy and girl with a work ethic identical to Mom's, but without the tenderness and attention they so desperately need. On a larger scale, Chen sees an entire subculture as the victims, immigrants (some living in the US illegally) lured into a false sense of American security, chasing a carrot which never sits within reach. Of course, there's a part of the economy -- from ripoff artists to law enforcement -- that benefits, an irony not lost on Chen's subtly drawn environment.
The story takes on another layer when Elaine runs into trouble and doesn't return home one evening. Gradually and carefully, Chen builds a story of survival for the creatively resourceful Raymond and Tina, whose own invention, so to speak, takes them onto the streets of downtown Boston with mom's whereabouts unknown. Chen keeps the danger and sadness at bay, instead giving us two fairly developed kid characters. In their own ways, each straddles the line between the abstract and the pragmatic, separately imagining a world where a million dollars is within their reach.
That feeling of history repeating is the real tragedy at the heart of Children of Invention, and Chen has love and care in the telling, poetry in the form of exposition and dialogue. When a plot point or two feels uncomfortably convenient, Chen seems aware of it and rolls with it. It's a confidence he should take to further stories, sharper scripts, bigger ambitions.
