Omeleto | PISTACHIO | Omeleto @Omeleto | Uploaded July 2024 | Updated October 2024, 18 hours ago.
A woman discovers her daughter goes to therapy.
PISTACHIO is used with permission from Doro Nguyen. Learn more at https://doronguyen.com.
Shu is angry. She has just picked up her daughter Livy from the psychiatric ward of a hospital and brings her home. She doesn't understand why her daughter is so unhappy when Shu and her husband have sacrificed so much to come to the U.S. and give her child a different life.
But when Shu discovers Livy is still seeing a therapist, it's the last straw, and Shu refuses to speak to or engage with her daughter. Yet the more she entrenches herself in silence, the more she endangers her relationship with her daughter, and their relationship soon hits a point where they either must try to understand one another or break apart.
Directed and written by Doro Nguyen, this compelling short drama has a naturalistic simplicity, but through its layered storytelling, it manages to deftly explore an interwoven knot of issues: the differences between generations, the gap between immigrant parents and their Americanized children and the stigma and silence around mental health in Asian cultures.
It's a heavy set of topics, but it's handled with a matter-of-fact gentleness, from the simple piano score to the soft naturalism of the visuals. The storytelling is steadily paced as well, capturing the rhythms of Livy's relationship with her mother and the steady hum of their household home. Even as Livy resettles at home, the surface of the home seems unruffled, but for Shu's determined avoidance of her daughter. Yet underneath the placidity, tension builds as Shu refuses to speak to Livy. She tries to get Shu's father to talk to their daughter, but he's caught in the middle, trying to understand his daughter but manage his wife's resentment.
The parents and Livy struggle to understand one another, and it seems the gap between them might be too wide to bridge. Actors Nguyen, Grace Lin and Dominic Wong have the lived-in chemistry of a family, but also adroitly play the strange dance of silence and resentment between them, whether it's Livy's sometimes flippant minimization of what happened to her parents' determined avoidance.
Yet the tension eventually overflows, leading to a painful but honest conversation between Livy and her parents. When they finally argue, what emerges is a gap between Livy and her parents, who think therapy is for people with "real problems" or "abnormal," an idea that hurts Livy, who is also accused of "being dramatic." It's a set of insights that deftly coalesces just what obstacles Livy faces in her mental health journey, but it also dramatizes their different ways of looking at peace and happiness. The open argument, as painful as it is, does open up a space for Livy and Shu to come to a kind of understanding, which brings PISTACHIO -- a symbol of happiness in Chinese culture and often given during the New Year -- to a close, one as warmhearted and gently compassionate as the film itself.
Cast:
Grace Lin as Shu
Dominic Wong as Chao
Doro as Livy
A woman discovers her daughter goes to therapy.
PISTACHIO is used with permission from Doro Nguyen. Learn more at https://doronguyen.com.
Shu is angry. She has just picked up her daughter Livy from the psychiatric ward of a hospital and brings her home. She doesn't understand why her daughter is so unhappy when Shu and her husband have sacrificed so much to come to the U.S. and give her child a different life.
But when Shu discovers Livy is still seeing a therapist, it's the last straw, and Shu refuses to speak to or engage with her daughter. Yet the more she entrenches herself in silence, the more she endangers her relationship with her daughter, and their relationship soon hits a point where they either must try to understand one another or break apart.
Directed and written by Doro Nguyen, this compelling short drama has a naturalistic simplicity, but through its layered storytelling, it manages to deftly explore an interwoven knot of issues: the differences between generations, the gap between immigrant parents and their Americanized children and the stigma and silence around mental health in Asian cultures.
It's a heavy set of topics, but it's handled with a matter-of-fact gentleness, from the simple piano score to the soft naturalism of the visuals. The storytelling is steadily paced as well, capturing the rhythms of Livy's relationship with her mother and the steady hum of their household home. Even as Livy resettles at home, the surface of the home seems unruffled, but for Shu's determined avoidance of her daughter. Yet underneath the placidity, tension builds as Shu refuses to speak to Livy. She tries to get Shu's father to talk to their daughter, but he's caught in the middle, trying to understand his daughter but manage his wife's resentment.
The parents and Livy struggle to understand one another, and it seems the gap between them might be too wide to bridge. Actors Nguyen, Grace Lin and Dominic Wong have the lived-in chemistry of a family, but also adroitly play the strange dance of silence and resentment between them, whether it's Livy's sometimes flippant minimization of what happened to her parents' determined avoidance.
Yet the tension eventually overflows, leading to a painful but honest conversation between Livy and her parents. When they finally argue, what emerges is a gap between Livy and her parents, who think therapy is for people with "real problems" or "abnormal," an idea that hurts Livy, who is also accused of "being dramatic." It's a set of insights that deftly coalesces just what obstacles Livy faces in her mental health journey, but it also dramatizes their different ways of looking at peace and happiness. The open argument, as painful as it is, does open up a space for Livy and Shu to come to a kind of understanding, which brings PISTACHIO -- a symbol of happiness in Chinese culture and often given during the New Year -- to a close, one as warmhearted and gently compassionate as the film itself.
Cast:
Grace Lin as Shu
Dominic Wong as Chao
Doro as Livy
