This review may contain spoilers.
Truth be told, I went into “With you, I found me” by Brylle Gaviola with high hopes. For Asian American diaspora, the oscillation between the individual and the family is so fraught – yet so present – in our everyday familial interactions. However heartfelt Gaviola's film is, however, it falls short of expectations. Plagued by amateur camerawork and a saccharine ending, “With You, I Found Me” surrenders to a Disneyfied version of real family drama.
“With You, I Found Me” review is part of the Submit Your Film Initiative
The twenty-minute short is based on a real experience written and acted out by My Do. Here, he plays Minh – a Vietnamese American man grieving the loss of both his fiance and his father. When he returns home after three years, however, the problems of his past bubble up before him. One sister stays mum about his deceased fiance; another one glibly ignores his sadness; and yet another one lashes out at him, angry that he left the family alone in times of trouble. Frustrated once again by his family, Minh debates upon leaving home again – until his sister, fresh out of rehab, threatens to do so first.
Rather than diving deep into emotional grit, the film dulls the pain of old wounds with a circuitous script. The movie reveals each character's background little by little, highlighting their rationale; this is rather intriguing. The script's delivery, however, feels hollow. Save for Do, the actors don't seem to believe a word they're saying. The sisters especially jauntily parrot their lines without conviction. This not only detracts from real tension, but also accentuates the film's sheer artifice. Hence, the group hug at the end feels less cathartic than it does absurd. Years of family division and unspoken bitterness melt away over the course of one morning conversation, calling upon viewers to simply “talk to each other” to resolve all problems.
This simplistic approach is echoed in the amateur camerawork as well. Shots intercut each scene without rhyme or reason; the camera angles retain an awkward distance from Minh and his family. As if afraid to get too close to the family drama, Gaviola keeps the cameras at arm's length most of the time. And perhaps this is for good reason. The few shot-reverse-shots in this dialogue-heavy film reveal an inconsistency in recorded audio quality. The sound changes per shot instead of per sequence, suggesting that the few cameras, not external microphones, recorded the dialogue. These technical inadequacies – though seemingly small – ultimately distract from the thickness of the short's raw emotion.
“With You, I Found Me,” then, ends with more feelings of disappointment than it does of hope. Though the story came from such a personal place in the writer's heart, poor editing and directing cut the drama short. Instead of a rare, reparative story about LGBTQ Asian America, then, we see a meager attempt at pulling heartstrings. It's a short that marks just how much more work has to be done.
