Blue Bayou: An American Tragedy

Before we went to see Blue Bayou, my boyfriend asked me if I thought it was going to have a happy ending. Brimming with optimism, I said “Oh yes, I’m sure it will either end well or leave you with the sense that there is some hope for the protagonist!” Welp, spoiler alert. I walked out of that theater in tears. Now I want to make it clear, I thought this was a good and interesting movie and you should see it. But maybe not if you are having a rough week. 

Writer-director Justin Chon stars as Antonio LeBlanc (yes, the name is very on the nose), a Korean man who was adopted by a white couple in Louisiana when he was three and was raised as a full-fledged American. Unfortunately, he is not an American in terms of his paperwork as his adoptive parents never sorted out his citizenship. And now, after a minor skirmish with the law, he finds himself under threat of deportation to a country he had never known, having to leave behind his stepdaughter and his pregnant wife. That wife, Kathy, is played by Alicia Vikander. Who is a wonderful Swedish actress but is flirting with a Louisiana accent in this film with dire results. It really is a testament to what a good actress she is that I was still able to stay invested in this movie despite cringing every time she took her accent out for a spin. Thankfully, the other actors made up for it, though I'm sure if I was actually from New Orleans, I might not feel that way. 

As an immigrant myself, this movie raises compelling questions about what exactly it means to be an American. Since Antonio doesn’t look like a white man, his Americanness is constantly being denied. But then he meets a Vietnamese woman (played by the wonderful Linh Dan Pham) who invites him and his family over to her house for a big cookout. There, he learns how to make a summer roll, and his wife asks him if he’s ever eaten food like this before. He has to say No, and it’s clear that he has never identified himself as being Asian. 

This is a tragic movie about a loophole in US law that allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the infamous ICE) to deport people who were adopted into this country as babies but didn’t formally have the paperwork to become US citizens. While this is a fictional story designed to tug your heartstrings to the max, the premise is fully factual and is one more entry in why America is a terrible place to be if you are poor and disenfranchised. At it's core, Blue Bayou is about a working class family that is managing to scrape by and live some semblance of the American dream. It is beautifully shot by Matthew Chuang and Ante Cheng and the scenes with Antonio on his motorcycle, or carrying his stepdaughter (shoutout to the riveting Sydney Kowalske who must portray SO MUCH heartbreak in this movie) on his shoulders, capture all the freedom and beauty that America promises to us all. That is, until the true American reality of racism, police brutality, and government bureaucracy and cruelty rip away all his dreams. There was a fun scene where Antonio's stepdaughter makes him dye his hair pink. But a few scenes later, we see him sweating with exertion as he's working a dire job to make some money to pay for his lawyer, and that bright pink dye is now dripping down his shoulders. America doesn't let you indulge in fun for very long when you're poor.

The movie piles indignities upon this man and it is insanely over-the-top in terms of how often it keeps pulling the rug out from under him. It eventually felt like an endless storytelling exercise and I was quite numb to the emotion of the entire thing because there was so much tragedy that it all started to feel too abstract. But the final scene hit a crescendo (both in terms of a soaring score by composer, Roger Suen, and an acting extravaganza from Chon and Kowalske) that finally broke me down. I suppose I appreciate the catharsis but damn, that was a lot to handle on a Sunday night. So if you need to purge your soul and enjoy a reckoning with America in all her beauty and despair, head on over to the Blue Bayou. It's gonna be quite the journey.