Rom-Com Season: Crazy Rich Asians (Dir Jon M. Chu, 2hrs, 2018)

 

It's fair to say that the rom-com is not exactly synonymous with opulence. For a start, the medium is absolutely middle-of-the-road most of the time when it comes to budget-the average romcom sits somewhere in the region of $30-50 million-and whilst there are outliers, including 2010's How Do You Know, a film that has the triple-whammy of a $120 million budget, being a box office bomb, and featuring Jack Nicholson's last film appearance to date on one end, and the previously mentioned My Big Fat Greek Wedding on the other, (with a budget of barely $5 million) on the other. But neither of these are overly opulent. Sure, there are the countless Austen, Bronte and the like adaptions in straight-up romance films, but the rom-com itself is rarely (with the retch-inducing Sex and the City duology aside), a genre that flashes its bling, so to speak.

And then there is Crazy Rich Asians, an adaption of the 2013 novel by Kevin Kwan, in which a Chinese-American woman realises that her boyfriend is more than meets the eye, as, when the two travel back to be at the wedding of one of his best friends, she is catapulted into the high-power, and almost baroquely wealthy world of Singapore, where she ill-fits in against the fantastically wealthy world, and against her boyfriend's powerful and demanding mother, and the machinations of one of the wealthiest families in the entire country, until her abilities and self-belief, win out.

We begin with a flashback, in which the pure financial power of the Young family is introduced, as moments after the family (led by Michelle Yeoh's Eleanor) are essentially given the boot from a ritzy hotel-in the first of many reminders of casual racism, not only between Chinese and non-Chinese, but also between the Chinese diaspora in the US, and those who remain in the far-east-Eleanor, her children, including Nick (played by Henry Golding as an adult), returns to take up residence in the hotel, as her husband has bought the entire location. This show of financial power is, pretty much, par for the course, though it's only later that the pure size and width of their financial power is made apparent. We jump forward to 2018, as the film introduces Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), an economics professor, who teaches on game theory.

Wu, in all honesty, is one of the best things about this film. It's easy, certainly for the rom-com heroine to either fall into love, or be slowly brought around to loving her partner-but Crazy Rich Asians, from the get-go, essentially places its relationship in media res-Nick and Rachel have already met, fallen in love, and, whilst the film inevitably tests their relationship, at points to near breaking point, it's clearly a loving relationship, built on their respect, and, in all honesty, Wu and Golding's natural chemistry. It's something, compared to the rest of the films that we've covered this month, and the medium in general, that may feel like a small moment, but the duo enter, and indeed exit the film as equals, rather than the typical imbalance of power (Nick's wealth aside), that the genre often falls back on. Neither does Wu's performance feel diminished by her being a down-to-earth girl out of her depth in almost impossibly wealthy surroundings-certainly, the film can't resist occasional fish-out-of-water moments.

Their flight to, and time in, Singapore is perfectly punctuated with moments in which Rachel doesn't quite gather the wealth of her boyfriend's family, seen again at the party she attends in which she's introduced to the family, and the swingeingly satirical bachelorette party, but these are played and shot with such charm and warmth, aside from the faintly macabre bachelorette party in which her room is vandalised, which comes more as a general attack on the idea of crass wealth, and the nouveau rich against the old wealth that Nick and his family represent-indeed, the film's complex relationship with wealth essentially underpins much of its best moments; almost every character intersects with wealth to one degree or another, and it's something we'll talk about when we get to the best character in the entire film.

Nick, for his part, is a remarkably down to earth and, honestly, almost faultlessly charming love interest-Golding is, without a doubt one of the best British actors of the last decade and the fact that he isn't one of the most bankable stars of this generation lies more in an unfortunate sense still running through the film industry as to what they want their stars to look like, rather than Golding's considerable charm and talent as an actor. What his sweet sensibility as Rachel's boyfriend does belie, though, is that this film, certainly in the way that it depicts its other male lovers, is a smartly updated throwback to "the other man" of things like Austen's novels and their adaptions. Simply put, Nick isn't like other men, with the possible exception of the equally charming Colin (Chris Pang), whose relationship and marriage to Araminta (Sonoya Mizuno) instigates the entire film's action, and brings Nick back to Singapore.

No scene better captures this divide than a scene that comes midway through Colin's bacchanalian stag-do, where the duo of Nick and Colin escape to a nearby island, sit and drink, and discuss life and love-the film's master-stroke is intercutting this with the discovery of Rachel's vandalised room by her and Nick's sister, Astrid (Gemma Chan), whose deteriorating relationship with her husband runs parallel to Nick and Rachel's trials and tribulations. Around them, though, the men of Crazy Rich Asians are, to a man, either vacuous, feckless, or obsessed with their images as they essentially live out their lives on the family notoriety and wealth, or, in the case of Bernard, an old friend of Colin and Nick, or Astrid's husband, Michael, as disreputable or crassly obsessed with wealth and sex. It's after this introduction to the family, as the duo finally meet Nick's family, with Awkwafina's enjoyably over the top former student Goh, in tow, so the film starts to gather pace. 

It is here, thus, that Nick and Rachel's unstoppable love meets the immovable object of Yeoh's Eleanor. For, undoubtedly, this is Michelle Yeoh's film. Every moment she is on screen, she simply walks away with the film, as only Yeoh can. Her smartly written character, who effortlessly balances female empowerment with deference to tradition may head up a group of excellently written women; there's not one weak character in the entire family, from her sisters, to her mother, played by the grand-dame of Chinese acting herself, Lisa Lu, but it is Eleanor who rules this film. It is, after all, she who Rachel has to convince of her worthiness, she who represents the "old money", the tradition, the, yes, power (her husband may be the money behind the family, but we never actually see him on screen), of the Young family. Again and again, the film uses her and Rachel's relationship to drive the film forward.

We see Eleanor, certainly, first as old money. We briefly see Goh's family, who become Rachel's refuge after Eleanor's disdain and disapproval of her son's girlfriend make their mark, as a perfect example of garish new money. Their house is half-Versailles, half Trump Tower, there's, in every aspect of the family's decor and dress, a sense of splashing of the cash. When we come to meet the Youngs, however, everything is lavish in a smartly understated way, the class and elegance of the entire family seen in costume, the jewellery, their furnishings, and, indeed their food. If one has to find fault with Crazy Rich Asians-aside from its rather questionable portrayal of the South East Asian diaspora in Singapore-it is in its oddly staid, and stuffy sense of old money. The solid staying power, the elegance and class, even on a maximalist scale, is so often represented by the film's women-against the almost ridiculous excesses of men that border on the vulgar. Eleanor is a gatekeeper, a protector of the family, its tradition and, arguably, its status, class, and wealth obsessed men.

But more than this, and erring even more towards the side of the traditional, of the classical romantic novel, is that of tradition-the film has, certainly been criticised as being escapism, but it is an escapism that only allows, aside from its audience, a select few into its inner sanctum. And yet, even here, Crazy Rich Asians never quite drops the balancing act that makes the film work. It would certainly, have been easy to make Eleanor a dragon lady, a lazy stereotype that much of the older part of the cast have doubtless had to play at one point or another to an Anglo-centric audience. Yet the film gives Yeoh the lion's share of the best line-her struggle, like that of Rachel, is between love and the family's status and hierarchy. Yeoh and Wu's confrontation at the end, in which they both begin to understand each other, despite the divide of class, status, and origin, is perhaps one of the best single scenes of the entire genre, a moment where, undeniably, love wins out.

It's...easy to dismiss the Rom-com as a genre. Like the most elaborate of barista made coffees, it can be regarded as overly sweet, frothy, lacking substance, lacking taste, and squarely aimed towards a certain female demographic that eats these things up and happily indulges their sweet tooth time and again. Crazy Rich Asians is no exception-it's a moreish glitzy cake of a film, piled high with all sorts of almost absurdly intricate little details, from the C-Pop covers of classic pop and rock songs to the beautifully shot wedding scenes, to the way that Singapore is so beautifully framed and shot.. It's cinematic escapism on the same scale as Lurhman's 2013 adaption of The Great Gatsby, a film positively beholden to its celebration of excess on massive scale. It may be a basic romantic comedy ballooned to gargantuan scale.

But. But it matters. It's the first major Asian led film with a majority Asian cast in nearly three decades. It matters because the rom-com heroine is so rarely anything but white, it matters because, for all its frothiness, looking up as a young woman, and seeing yourself as the heroine, in love with a handsome man, matters. The Rom-com may not be my favourite genre, but over the past few weeks, I have to admit, I've fallen a little for it, and long may it reign, break barriers, and entertain us all.

Crazy Rich Asians is not a perfect film. It sticks a little bit too close to the tried and tested tropes of the genre, its peripheral characters fall occasionally back into stereotypes, and its celebration of wealth and tradition and old-money-power do occasionally feel like something from a film fifty years ago. But, together with, undeniably, the film's utter defiance in the face of a genre that is, at least, coming from Hollywood, overwhelmingly white to tell a story with two Asian leads, Crazy Rich Asians is a sterling, star-studded, and almost overwhelmingly glitzy take on the romantic comedy genre.

Rating: Highly Recommended

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