As constantly blaring TVs report news of the world falling apart (flooding, wars, sunspots, meteor showers) at an ever faster pace than we're used to, one Asian-American family is also on the verge of coming undone. Hypertense single mom Saura (Julia Nickson-Soul) is trying to cope with her depressive 20-ish daughter Pam (Sanoe Lake), and that leaves little time for her 10-year-old Tim (Alexander Agate), through whose eyes and with whose perception much of the action is seen and interpreted. Saura's new boyfriend Wendell (Ben Redgrave) is yet another distraction. 'If I don't get some alone time, I'm literally going to die,' Saura announces at the dinner table. Well, OK, Mom.
The troubled Pam has a crush on her gay friend Scott (Leonardo Nam), but he's involved with Tim's teacher, a fact Scott gladly shares with his conservative Christian parents to rattle their cages.
We learn that the family started to come unglued when the husband/father literally flew the coop a few years earlier, hopping into his small plane and flying away, never to return. This fact leads to much metaphorical meditation on flight, with Tim's crayon drawings morphing into gorgeous animated sequences showing various kinds of planes, birds (especially seagulls), and even flying manta rays. Phang lays it on a bit thick here. While it's all quite lovely and even verges on poetry, it's also a touch heavy-handed and twee.
Magical realism plays an increasing role as the film moves along, with Tim turning out to have some pretty impressive powers. Are they real, or are they just flights of his young fancy? That's up for us to decide, and there's plenty here to ponder. Among all the powerful performances, Phang gets extra credit for eliciting outstanding work from the young Agate. It's one of the most subtle and carefully modulated juvenile performances in recent memory. That's vitally important given his position as audience surrogate.
One critic called Half-Life a sort of 'Asian-American Beauty,' and that's right on the money when you see the well-tended suburban lawns concealing the turmoil inside all those cookie-cutter subdivision homes. I'd add that Phang also seems influenced by films like Magnolia that dare to go into a realm of suspended disbelief hyper-reality, a place where a movie can either fail miserably or soar. In this case, it definitely takes flight.
All art.
