Wang couldn’t picture the film without Chen in it. “The first meeting I had with her was over Zoom. She spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to turn on the camera,” he says affectionately. “But she came prepared, and she asked so many deep, thoughtful questions about the character that really, really pushed me and challenged me to think deeper about both the story and her character—how to make that the most layered, and rich, and nuanced version of it.”
In the edit, this meant cutting many of Chen’s lines—because she so fully inhabited Chungsing that every feeling, every register, was there in her eyes. “They communicate such longing, and regret, and pain, and love,” Wang says. It’s the same ineffable quality she’s brought to movies since she was a teenage phenomenon in China, and that has too rarely been showcased in American movies.
Young filmmakers are now seeing Chen, writing for her, and offering her space in a way that feels different. In a true full circle moment, Chen recently wrapped production on the upcoming remake of Lee’s The Wedding Banquet, directed by Fire Island’s Andrew Ahn. She’s playing the loudly accepting mother of a queer daughter (Kelly Marie Tran) whose earlier years in parenting weren’t quite as openhearted. It’s a funny, gloriously silly, but also sometimes sad role.
“When I first met with Andrew on Zoom, he was talking extensively about his own mother to inform the relationship between me and my daughter in the film,” she says. These directors “are able to express more honestly, truthfully, and authentically their own experiences—not selling what Hollywood’s so-called accepted version of being what Asians should be.” Wang concurs: “Hopefully as a result, there are more roles for people like her, because now people like me are looking at our parents in a way that’s like, ‘Oh, they’re not just our parents.’”
Chen senses the impact. She’s shocked by the Oscar buzz trailing her, having spent close to four decades in Hollywood without it. She’s noticing interest in her past swell at the same time that her present is finally generating attention. She recently did a special screening of Xiu Xiu at the San Francisco Film Festival, and streamers are starting to ask her about putting it on their platforms. “I’m like, I don’t even know where to find it. Where is my cut negative?” she says with a laugh.
Honestly, excessive noise makes her nervous. “It’s too much,” Chen says. Still, she’s ready to support Dìdi however she can—if not with media training, then maybe with a few more social media posts. “My daughter just resurrected my Instagram, and she was telling me yesterday, ‘Mom, you didn’t touch it for the past three weeks!’” Chen says. “Tonight I will probably take care of it.” It’s a start.
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