Tie a Yellow Ribbon (2007)
Director Joy Dietrich’s film, Tie a Yellow Ribbon, documents the struggles of Jenny Mason (Kim Jiang) a Korean twentysomething who moves to New York City to escape her white, adoptive family and the scandal surrounding her love affair with her stepbrother Joe (Patrick Heusinger).
The teaser paragraph in the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival’s catalogue gave me much to be excited about, as I am half-Korean and have dealt with my share of divisive identity issues while growing up. But here’s the first disappointment I experienced: the moment I looked at Jiang I knew she was not Korean. She is Chinese.
Jiang plays a character who is gnostic, chain-smoking and self-absorbed, not surprisingly, or entertainingly, given the film’s roots in hipster headquarters, NYC. Furthermore, she has trouble trusting people and making connections as evinced in the films opening sequence when she seduces a man at the coffee shop she works at, only to rebuff his advances, post-coitus, and tell him that kissing “is kind of intimate.” The quip is familiar and entertaining, but rather than spend the first thirty minutes introducing her main character and driving the plot, Dietrich establishes Jenny as an emotionless robot, which is a difficult person for the audience to care about or watch.
The dialogue in Tie a Yellow Ribbon is precarious and awkward. Jiang has little help on the screen, as she plays a mostly silent and brooding character; Bea (Jane Kim) is a fetishized parent pleasing academic while Sandy (Theresa Ngo) is a meek pushover. Phillip (Gregory Waller) is Bea’s abusive boyfriend and Simon (Ian Wen) is the only character who seems capable of helping Jenny grow, and consequently, one of the only likable people appearing during the film. Kudos to Wen and Heusinger for delivering the best and admirable performances.
I was impressed with the use of Andrew Wyeth’s Christina, but most of the film looked very poor at theatre proportions, as it was originally intended to be a Super 16 short and then continued on in High Definition, Dietrich revealed in the discussion after the screening. She also stated that it was now “fashionable to adopt foreign children, like Angelina Jolie” and claimed that “children are one of Korea’s top exports.” Dietrich also claims that Asian-American women are the demographic leaders in suicide and depression, especially at a young age. One of my uncles suffered through depression and committed suicide more than 10 years ago and I felt compelled to call Dietrich’s bluff, but now I’ve done some fact checking. First, caucasian males under 40 years old are the most likely to commit suicide; those between 15 and 24 are even more likely and Native American males between 15 and 24 are the most at risk. In fact, males are four times more likely to die from suicide than women, who likely report suicide attempts three times more than men; death is probably a major inhibitor for the men. As for depression, the US Department of Health and Human Services make no indication that Asian-American women between 15 and 24 suffer from abnormally high depression rates. So is there validity to Dietrich’s claim? Hardly. Asian-American women have the highest suicide rate among all women over 65 years of age, which makes this film a bit disingenuous.
In a movie about growth and identity, Dietrich does little to bring the plot full circle: Bea commits suicide and Jenny ambiguosly walks off into the horizon. The audience doesn’t know which path she has chosen: Simon or Joe, growth or stagnation, the past or the future, the Asian or the Caucasian. Tie a Yellow Ribbon is as long-winded as it is didactic and is in need of some editing, perhaps back to short status. The official runtime is listed at 87 minutes, but the last 30 minutes felt like an eternity.
Currently playing at the 2007 Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival in the International Competition category
Directed, written, produced by Joy Dietrich; editing by Rasmus Høgdall Mølgaard, Stephen Maing; cinematography by Lars Bonde; music by John Schmersal. Running time: 87 minutes.
WITH: Kim Jian (Jenny), Jane Kim (Bea), Patrick Heusinger (Joe Mason), Ian Wen (Simon), Theresa Ngo (Sandy)
Popularity: 23% [?]
Tags: film, gregory waller, ian wen, jane kim, joy dietrich, kim jiang, mannheim heidelberg film festival, patrick heusigner, review, theresa ngo, tie a yellow ribbon
October 25th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Please don’t say I was disingenious about the statistic of high rates of depression among young Asian American women—please see
http://www.nawho.org/pubs/NAWHOSilence.pdf.
You have the right to your opinions about the film but you do not have the right to accuse me of lying to my public or audience.