DVDs From the Library -Red Doors

In the library there is a bin full of DVDs. One may take up to five and keep them for a week. Don’t forget to return them on time or you will pay a hefty over-due penalty, or worse, they will develop a terminal mold and eat your furniture, flooring and, eventually, your brain. Join me now as I take a look at one…

Red Doors-a film by Georgia Lee

This film had the obligatory row of laurel-leaved awards across the top of the packaging but, unlike the last Chinese film I watched (Taking Father Home), this one, for the most part, deserved them. The characters were likable and believable enough to possibly exist on Earth. More importantly the plot was engaging enough to keep me awake. I like films that delve into family dynamics and this family was one I could easily relate to. A self-absorbed Mother who refuses to allow the husband or the daughters to relax and find their own way. Three daughters-one a young professional on the threshold of marrying her stogy boyfriend, one a closet Goth in high school, and one a doctor who was trying to sort out her sexual orientation. The first eventually abandons her plans for marriage in favor of following her heart to true love. The second wakes from her childish dreams and negativity to realize that the world is not out to get her and she can enjoy her family and her new boyfriend. The doctor comes out of the closet and everybody, it seems, is happy…except the Dad. Surrounded by over bearing females, recently retired and purposeless he is lost. He is consumed by video tape images of his lovely daughters when they were young and his little girls and now there is no place for him in their lives. He runs away.

As I have said the plot is very believable and contemporary. The backdrop is a modern suburban home, a modern high school, a modern hospital. The Red Door alluded to is the front door of the family’s home and that is the portal that links the old world with the new and the old culture and traditions to the new. It also signifies, to me, maturing of the family from the young mom and dad with dependent daughters to a family where the daughter have become independent and, unfortunately, unobservant of the needs of both the mother and the father. The mother and father who have given them all the love, possessions, education, and opportunities with which to succeed are now forgotten and ignored.

I liked this film and I award it three cans of cheap beer.