There’s plenty of sad, depressing movies out there. You know what I mean: those life draining melancholic masterpieces that slow your walk home, and make you curl up into the fetal position as you cry yourself to sleep. In the history of movies like this, Rosemead easily makes the finals against probably The Girl With the Needle. I don’t know who wins, but I guarantee no one will be happy going home with that hardware…but they will be forever changed having seen either.
Rosemead has the darkest movie pitch of all time. Irene (Lucy Liu) is a middle class immigrant single mother living in Rosemead, California. She has one Joe (Lawrence Shou) as sad as she is at the beginning of the movie, having lost their husband/father very recently. Faced with societal ridicule, Irene on the DL sends Joe to therapy with Dr. Hsu (James Chen). She hopes against hope that the doctor will help James deal with the dark thoughts invading his mind more and more since his father’s passing.
You might be thinking “Ok, that’s bleak, but it’s not THAT horrible, right?” Did I forget to mention Irene has found out her own cancer has returned and she’s not responding to treatments. Oh, and Joe’s dark thoughts are not just depression, but schizophrenia? Eric Lin has 4 minutes to give even a mildly happy beginning, before dragging us down into whatever circle of hell this is. Now, there’s ways to take this horrible premise and turn it into a treatise on living life to the fullest. But to be faithful to the real story Rosemead is based on, Lin finds ways to make our small family even more sad. Because neither mother or son is great at communicating their feelings and dealing with their own horrible circumstances, the story starts revealing what happens to the mind as senses no way out, from both Joe and Irene’s points of view. The director tries his best to distract us with thriller elements just so we all don’t walk out of his movie with the Vietnam Vet stare, but those fleeting dalliances eventually lead us down this dark path to Hades, and a climax that’s gonna make you either die inside, throw up, or sit there, unmoving, mouth ajar, too afraid to do anything like our poor poor protagonists.
That level of darkness requires a fearlessness in performance necessary for Rosemead to deliver the brutal way it does. Lucy Liu is nothing short of amazing here, completely surrendering herself to Irene. There’s not an ounce of the bubbly charming Liu in here, making us feel like every moment of every day she’s weighed down by 50 pounds and still has to keep going. Lawrence Shou is basically playing Joe as two people: normal sweet Joe, almost 18 year old shy high school swimmer, and a paranoid shell of a human husk, unreachable by anyone except his darkest impulses. Lin makes sure Liu is there through the most important stuff so he’s not stuck delivering complex emotion alone, and Lin’s heartache aneurysm inducing editing helps Shou sell you on what schizophrenic flare ups look like to a helpless underaged kid.
So, um, need a good cry? Rosemead will at least put life more in perspective for you. At least, I hope it does. If you find yourself shockingly relating very similarly to Irene, PLEASE ASK EVERYONE FOR HELP. Society’s judgment be damned. You are loved, and there are good people out there ready to help.