CHILDREN OF INVENTION
Written & Directed by Tze Chun
Produced by Mynette Louie & Trevor Sagan
USA. 86 min. Not Rated
With Cindy Cheung, Michael Chen & Crystal Chiu
 

Children of Invention can easily have turned into another painfully sincere independent film—the kind that sees the depressing realities of daily life as a fast train to artistic credibility. The same premise, possibly even the same script, may have flopped in less delicate hands. But here, director Tze Chun has made an honest and effective cookie-cutter indie.

He tells the tale of Elaine Cheng (Cindy Cheung), an immigrant Chinese mother scraping by and raising her two small kids after a recent divorce. We meet Elaine on the heels of the failure of her latest money-making venture, a vitamin marketing scheme. Despite forfeiting her investment, she dives back into the classifieds looking for another marketing position as if it were the holy grail of the American dream. Elaine also works in real estate and, in fact, spends every waking moment consumed by her jobs.

After losing their house in a working-class Boston suburb to foreclosure, the Chengs stealthily move into a condominium still under development—living like mice between its sterile walls. Elaine, led by desperation and frenzied ambition, finally becomes involved in a new network marketing “opportunity,” which quickly crashes around her.

Meanwhile, her children, Raymond (Michael Chen) and Tina (Crystal Chiu), wait alone at home, wait in cars, and long for “family days” when their mother takes them to the mall. The little kids are the pivot point of the film. We watch them try to make sense of their reticent mother’s struggles. Raymond, the older of the two, comforts and distorts the truth for his little sister while he himself comes to terms with their family’s situation. If not for the dead-on casting of these two roles, the film would certainly not work. Both children do a stellar job, but the standout is little Tina, whose manner is marvellously charming and unselfconscious.

Children of Invention is textured by the drab realities of a certain style of American life. The depressing feel of an empty office on a Saturday afternoon, the unsavoury pleasantries of forced social interactions, the sea of dusty plastic in a 99-cent store, even the hum of an overhead plane takes on a joy-draining quality in the sharp realism of the film. Luckily, the remarkable children serve as an emotional antidote, and the viewer leaves somehow more inspired than dejected. Yana Litovsky
March 12, 2010