In her new film Dìdi, Chinese American actress and director Joan Chen is receiving the best reviews of her extraordinary career.
In the below conversation with Andy Hazel, Joan discusses her work from The Home Song Stories to Dìdi.
Joan Chen raises her face toward the soft light coming from behind the camera. The Chinese American actress is pondering an answer to a question about the impact of motherhood on her role in the film Dìdi, Sean Wang’s breakout hit from January’s Sundance Film Festival, and a film that has steadily been gathering acclaim and awards as the year progressed. Her role as Chungsing is based on Wang’s mother; a loving portrait of a woman who sacrificed her own artistic ambitions to raise children in a new country.
“It is hard not to compare myself to other people who've had a very different experience,” she says, her face turning toward me. “Because Sean's own mother is from Taiwan. My own experience, obviously, is unique because of my profession. A lot of Chinese immigrants, either from Taiwan or mainland China, came as students. Sean's mother also came as a student. I came as a student, but later, I started to make films. My path is a wild one. It's, you know, one day, maybe I'll make that into a film. But to prepare for Chungsing, I think it's more to reflect upon the time when my children were in their adolescent years.”
In an interview with NPR, Wang spoke about the experience of working with Chen on set, aware of her experience both as an actress and as a director and the power of the moment when, on the first day of shooting she put her hand on his shoulder and said, “you have nothing to worry about.”
“She's incredible,” said Wang.
Chen smiles at the compliment, describing Wang as a wonderful director and writer. Signing up to make the film, she was surprised to find that it would be shot in Wang’s childhood home, and that his mother would be on set throughout the shoot. “It's refreshing to see an authentic Asian mother like that, and not a stereotypical tiger mom or strict patriarch, just an immigrant mother wanting the best for their American children,” says Chen. “She's artistic, she's funny and while her situation wasn't the best, all of that, to me, was refreshing. I just had to pour my own experience into it.”
While her role is already gathering awards attention and many Oscar pundits are including her in their predictions in the Best Supporting Actress category, what has been truly surprising, and is perhaps more valuable, is the affection evoked by people in and outside the film industry at the mention of her name.
“My daughters came to me and told me, ‘OK, I think you’re having a renaissance,” she laughs. “After Dìdi came out [in the United States], my daughters were the first ones that sent me screenshots and articles about the film. They were the ones that told me there's Oscar buzz. I was so surprised that they cared about what I was doing!”
Evidence of a renaissance is supported by her role in Michael Showalter’s Christmas comedy Oh. What. Fun. due in December and Andrew Ahn’s remake of Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet opening next year. Chen expresses surprise at how busy she’s been in what she laughingly refers to as “the winter of my career”.
Australian audiences unfamiliar with Chen’s work in the 1987 Oscar-winning colossus The Last Emperor or cult classic television series Twin Peaks, may know her from Tony Ayres’ semi-autobiographical 2007 film The Home Song Stories. The film was a box office hit in Australia, and the winner of five Inside Film Awards and eight AFI awards. Chen took on the role of Rose, a character based on Ayres’ mother and one with clear parallels to that of Chungsing. At the mention of the film the gentle patience that has been hergives way to visible joy.
“That film was really something,” she says with a sigh before thinking of her other work in Australia. Chen’s first visit was for David Webb Peoples’ Mad Max-inspired dystopian sports thriller The Blood of Heroes, alongside Vincent D’Onofrio, Delroy Lindo and Rutger Hauer. Best known at that stage for co-writing Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Peoples would go on to write Unforgiven for Clint Eastwood and 12 Monkeys for Terry Gilliam, but for Chen, The Blood of Heroes the experience of shooting in Australia was the most enduring memory.
“We shot and rehearsed in Sydney,” she says. “Then we were on location in Coober Pedy, and what a unique experience that was. It really made me want to go back to Australia. So, when Tony Ayres came to me with this character, this great character, Rose, I was very grateful. Home Song Stories is very powerful and important to me, even though in America few people have seen it. I love that character.”
Much like Dìdi, Ayres’ film follows Tom, a boy struggling to hold the culture that fuses his relationship with his mother with that of his adopted country. Chen plays Rose Hong, a Hong Kong nightclub singer who married visiting Australian sailor Bill, played by Stephen Vidler. Rose moves to Melbourne with Bill, bringing her two young children, May and Tom. Problems arise as she attempts to start a career, but soon finds herself in an affair with the son of a Chinese restauranteur. While Rose loses her friends in Melbourne, and is unable to return to Hong Kong, Tom, based on Ayres himself, watches on uncomprehendingly as her mental health spirals and tragedies ensue. Rather than cry over the incredibly difficult life his mother led, Ayres, like Wang, wrote his film to better understand her. In both cases, the writer-director was aided by Chen. When it came to playing Rose, Chen made some bold decisions.
“I was a little fearful of playing a mother this bad,” she says. “I asked him, ‘could you find anything loving about her? Later in life, did you find that your mother made some sacrifice for you that you didn't realise before?’ And Tony said, ‘no, I did not find that, and that's not the movie I was planning to make’,” she pauses to remember. “But throughout the making of the film, I was missing my two young children, and I felt that, in spite of what Tony had said, of course she loved her children. Of course. Despite her nature, she was so incapable, so inept at delivering love. But of course, she loved them fiercely. And so my own motherhood informed how I chose to play that character. After the film came out, Tony said that he somehow fell in love with Rose that I delivered. I helped him find the way back to his own mother. So there is that parallel with Chungsing.”