One way to judge a filmmaker is by the way he or she directs children. Take Tze Chun and his im pressive first feature, “Children of Invention.”
He gets high marks for coaxing marvelous performances from his child stars: Michael Chen, who was 11 when the film was shot, and adorable Crystal Chiu, who was all of 8.
They portray Raymond and Tina Cheng, who live in a Boston suburb with their divorced, immigrant mom, Elaine.
Her ex is back in Hong Kong and behind in his child-support payments, and Elaine scraps by with dead-end jobs. One is in “network marketing,” which turns out to be nothing more than a Ponzi scheme aimed at the poor.
It’s painful to watch Elaine get scammed — you keep wanting to yell, “Don’t do it!”
When Elaine (Cindy Cheung, in a winning performance) doesn’t come home for a few days, the kids are forced to fend for themselves in inventive ways.
Their performances are realistic and unpretentious, and the backbone of this observant movie by a director-writer with a promising future.
“Children of Invention” is one of two movies about Asian immigrants in the US opening today at the Big Cinemas, formerly the ImaginAsian.
The second is “White Rice,” written and directed by Dave Boyle.
Hiroshi Watanabe is Jimmy, a divorced 40-year-old from Japan who moves in with his sister, Aiko (the single-name actress Nae) and her none-too-pleased husband, Tak (Mio Takada), and shares a bunk bed in the basement with his 10-year-old, piano-prodigy nephew (Justin Kwong).
Watanabe is endearing as a doofus in search of a job and a girlfriend, but the humor grows increasingly sitcom-ish when Tak’s niece Ramona moves in.