Ridiculous Premise Almost Saved by Ben Whishaw

+++++++++ Spoilers Alert +++++++++++++++

I like this movie and I find Ben Whishaw’s performance very moving but I have a big problem with the way the filmmaker structured the movie which makes it so ridiculous, it frustrates me to no end.

According to the interview with the director, which is on the dvd, he wants to put an interpreter in the movie (I don’t remember why, but that’s irrelevant, the point is, he wants to use this device) and his mother, allegedly, also doesn’t speak English even though she raised him in England and she lives there for about 20 years. So, he set up the situations so that both of the above devices are present to tell his story. Naturally, it is obviously his rights to do as he pleases but in order to make a good movie, the story has to make sense, you just can’t willy nelly stick characters in an artificially created vacuum without explaining the backstory. We are not talking about sci-fi or fantasy here, those movies have the “suspension-of-disbelief” factor built in. Real world drama doesn’t. Which brings me to the biggest problem I have with the movie; namely that the mother doesn’t speak any English after she has been in England for 29 years, and that the son would put her in a not community-based old-age home.

The character is supposed to speak 4 Chinese dialects plus 2 other languages (Cambodia and some other), so she is obviously quite smart, linguistically speaking. There is no reason on earth that she doesn’t know ANY English. I would even accept that she could not hold a CONVERSATION in English but I cannot accept anyone who has lived in any country for 29 years and not know any single word. That’s beyond ridiculous.

During the climatic scene, I was half expecting she started to explain everything in English, to the effect that she pretended to NOT know English because of some deep seated rage or something against the move to England, or something that makes sense. Alas, that’s not to be. The other thing is why would the son put the mother in a home with only English speakers, I am sure London’s Chinatown MUST have some community service that can put the elderly in a home with other Chinese speakers. But no, the filmmaker sets up the situation as if the characters exist in some alternate universe where no such social services exist. And the speech the mother makes at the end is so anachronistic (it’s so 1950s) and her way of coping is so, so WRONG, she has problems, is all I can say. What she really needs is therapy. The best thing Ben’s character can do for her is not to have her move in with him, but force her to see a therapist in order to heal her mentally. Other problems include that she has no other Chinese friends (again, characters exist in a vacuum) and that Ben’s character will want a dead lover’s mother, who has never liked him and who he cannot communicate with, to move in with him. What? Seriously?