Asian Americans Support 'Negative' Image

April 10 -- It's rare that a film by and about Asian-Americans gets national exposure, so there's been a lot of anticipation surrounding this weekend's release of Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow.

Better Luck Tomorrow depicts the lives of a group of supposedly perfect kids who live a double life of crime that starts with selling tests but spirals into drug-dealing and death.

Ironically, the less-than-savory portrait has been winning the film more support from the Asian-American community, rather than losing it.

It's clear that the film challenges a perception — the image of the well-mannered, law-abiding, overachieving Asian-American.

But the dissonance between the filmmaker's Asian-American identity and his intentions has still stirred some anger and confusion.

When the film was screened at the Sundance Film Festival last year, an audience member criticized Lin at the Q&A session afterward for his nihilism.

"How could you, despite your talented cast and great production values, make such a bleak, negative, amoral film? What kind of portrait is this of Asian-Americans? Don't you have a responsibility to paint a more positive and helpful portrait of your community?"

Ironically, the criticism was an unexpected boost for the film, when Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert challenged the audience member.

Ebert says he doesn't usually make comments in Q&A sessions. But he recalled the confrontation in an article for his newspaper and how he told the audience member, "You would never make a comment like that to a white filmmaker."

"This film has the right to be about these people, and Asian-American characters have the right to be whoever the hell they want to be. They do not have to represent their people," Ebert said.

More Than Counter-Stereotype

The attack was not a one-time event. In a later screening, another audience member criticized the film along similar lines — and found a defender in New York Times movie critic Elvis Mitchell.