Our Home Here: Short Film Review
The pursuit of the American dream is seldom a glorious battle. In her new short film Our Home Here, director Angela Chen engages with the unglamorous aspects of making and sustaining a life in the States, making the stories, which are often found only in first acts and prologues, the main focus of her story.
In a form reminiscent of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2006 film Babel, the short film follows the interweaving lives of three people: Dylan (Brandon Soo Hoo), a young man looking to join the U.S. Marines; Rose (Dianne Doan), Dylan’s jaded older sister who constantly looks after him; and Celine (Raquenel), an employee at a drive-thru burger joint called “Sunny Meals.” Feeling stranded at home, Dylan lashes out at Rose, destroying the interior of their house in his rage. Rose, who had been fixing a cabinet just before, waits out his tantrum in the bathroom. It is clear she’s been through this sort of outburst before. In the meantime, we are introduced to Celine, who we quickly learn is lying to her son about having a successful career in the States. In reality, she is a standard worker at a burger place, unable to get a promotion, and currently living out of her car. Rose and Dylan end up going to Sunny Meals for a burger late at night, during one of Celine’s shifts. Sean is there, drunk beyond the point of control, and gets into a fight with Dylan which ends with Dylan stabbing him before driving away from the scene with Rose. Overwhelmed with guilt, Dylan turns himself into the police, and Rose returns home, alone.
Tension is abundant even within the opening shot of the film; we are situated in a car driving down a long bridge, an image over which a voice, which we later learn is Rose’s, apprehensively asks, “Dylan? What happened?” The majority of the film takes place in the evening, a moody tint laying over each shot with a somberness that amplifies the characters’ collective weariness with their respective positions in life. Their cramped living spaces, whether it be Dylan and Rose’s trashed house or Celine’s packed car, exude a suffocating feeling to their environments – Rose has to tiptoe around the parts of broken furniture and trash strewn about the floor, and Celine barely has enough space to stretch her legs out. Later in the narrative, after the climactic scene in which Dylan stabs his assaulter at the drive-thru, intense orange hues fill the screen, emanating from the street lamps surrounding the two siblings. It is apocalyptic, almost dark-deco in style, a visual representation of the hopeless situation Dylan has fallen into.
The scenes involving Dylan and Rose are often intercut with camcorder shots of them in their childhood, either juxtaposing or reiterating the hardships they have faced together. In the midst of their fight at home, we see footage of their light-hearted tussles as kids. After the altercation at the drive-thru, we again get a glimpse into their innocent adolescent lives. These memories contrast immensely with their circumstances, heightening the joylessness of their lives as adults. Yet there are also hints as to what has influenced the siblings’ complicated relationship with each other hidden within the old tapes as well. For instance, one video in particular gives insight into the hyper-masculinity that Dylan embodies: near the beginning of the film, we hear Rose and Dylan’s father scolding a then-adolescent Dylan, telling him to stop crying and “be a man.” It is uncertain what has happened to their parents since the time of these recordings, but we may assume they are no longer around to provide for the two siblings.
Oftentimes we expect catharsis out of film and other works of art – a happy ending, a moment of enlightenment, some sort of triumph or growth. Chen offers only a snapshot of four lives, all plagued by their unique circumstances, with neither a victory nor a bold and beautiful vision in sight. Intense, poignant, and real, the film sheds light on the diverse narratives that exist among the underdogs of U.S. society.