Cannes 2021 : BLUE BAYOU / Critique
By Justin Chon. Official selection, Un Certain Regard.
Born in South Korea, Antonio Leblanc (Justin Chon) was adopted at age three by Americans. Today, when he has founded his own family, he is threatened with expulsion by a law which blindly hits adopted children whose papers, due to a legal vacuum, are no longer in order. This man who only knew America is going to have to fight against a system that wants to send him “home”. Justin Chon, one of the few Asian-born directors working in the American industry, tells stories of minorities and this is his way of painting his great portrait of America – his previous film GOOK took a look at the Korean community of Los Angeles during the riots of 1992. In BLUE BAYOU, America, it is this Louisiana, whose climate and sometimes the flora have airs of Asia (of Southeast Asia, especially), a state multicultural. Antonio Leblanc, with his Hispanic first name, his French-sounding family name, his Korean origins and his deeply American identity, is the symbol of a country founded by the same migrations which he no longer wants today. A past as a motorcycle thief and a profession as a freelance tattoo artist completed his marginal status. But Antonio has created a home for himself: a woman (Alicia Vikander) and her daughter from a previous marriage, a baby on the way. In the light of his eventual deportation and when he meets Parker, a Vietnamese woman at the end of her life, he goes back the way of his memories and wonders why he is not wanted anywhere. Identity melodrama, very sincere in its intentions but sometimes struggling to control its emotions – nothing serious if we disregard two or three excess violins – BLUE BAYOU borrows from Cassavetes a cinema verity, a passion that eats away at the characters. We also see Wong Kar-wai (dense colors, low frame rate), Hou Hsiao Hsien – 16mm helping a lot to rediscover the authenticity, harshness and freedom-loving images of the Taiwanese filmmaker. There are in BLUE BAYOU the aesthetic choices of the first film – yet it is his third -, beautiful combinations of traveling and zooming, cavalcades of the camera that leave you bloodless. In this sun-drenched or damp-smothered south, the stakes are hot. When Antonio must return to his first vices in an attempt to survive, this romantic thug becomes the hero of a suicidal headlong rush, a rebel and his just cause against a racist system and all-powerful cops. A particularly dark portrait of the Asian condition in the United States and a reminder of the atrocities that some Asians have gone through to find rest in America, BLUE BAYOU finds a certain appeasement in the community, portraying a resilient and welcoming Vietnamese diaspora. If it ends in big sobs, it is because the typically American heartbreak deserves this.
By Justin Chon. With Justin Chon, Alicia Vikander, Mark O’Brien. United States. 1h59. Release September 15
– .
