The Emerging Cinema series has brought so many worthy films to the Market Arcade that would otherwise have passed Buffalo by that it can be forgiven the occasional stinker, though it’s a pity that the fourth-rate Red Doors is timed to be onscreen during the holidays. (Then again, maybe it’s just a form of throw-in-the-towel programming on a weekend when so many viewers are likely to check out Hollywood’s Christmas offerings.) Writer-director Georgia Lee cobbles together elements from a decade’s worth of indie clichés around the frame of a Chinese-American family suffering the pains of generational assimilation (a cliché in and of itself). Eldest daughter Sam (Jacqueline Kim) is a successful (though undefined) businesswoman whose engagement to a sterile yuppie stockbroker (Jayce Bartok) founders with the return of her old boyfriend, a sensitive, guitar-playing music teacher (Rossif Sutherland, who looks like a Mad magazine parody of a soulful hunk). Middle daughter Julie (Elaine Kao) is a medical student who finds her true sexuality with a free-spirited actress. Teen Katie (Kathy Shao-Lin Lee) choreographs a hip-hop show for her high school and conducts an unexplained prank war with the boy next door that escalates into the use of explosives. To the extent that any of this underdeveloped fodder makes any sense, it’s because you’ve seen these stories played out so often before. Lee’s clumsiness with tone is almost as big a problem as the skeletal writing: The shifts between black humor and movie-of-the-week melodramatics are continually jarring. Red Doors plays as if Lee was more interested in compiling a series of clips that she could show to Hollywood producers, each of which on its own might indicate that she could handle a particular genre. If that’s the case, she must be presuming that no one would take the time to watch this debut feature all the way through. (And for anyone sniffing that I just don’t appreciate “chick flicks,” let me point out that my wife disliked it even more than I did.)
Questions or Comments for Artvoice? Send e-mail to editorial@artvoice.com • Article last modified 12/20/2006
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