Riceboy Sleeps (2022) User Reviews

Beautifully told story

[macseanny · 9/10 · 4 February 2023]

In a movie world seemingly saturated with hyperbolic movies, this comes as a welcome surprise. This movie has no worm holes, no fight scenes that keep going even though the recipient of such violence would've perished in the first 5 seconds, no rags to riches, no spandex, no fancy anything, and yet it still delivers!

Good storytelling. Great acting. Clever cinematography. The sweeping camera work and frame changes was used very effectively.

As a white Canadian boy, I thought the movie did an excellent job with racial discrimination. It wasn't forced on the viewer, and yet it showed how these subtle (and not so subtle) biases affect minorities almost daily. The movie also did a great job of showing how painfully unaware us white Canadians were/are of how impactful these displays of ignorance are. Stanley Park.

What makes this movie though, is the plight of a single mother and son. Great chemistry between these 2 (3) actors. A perfectly paced arc of their growth together.

Brilliant movie. I hope it gets picked up by streaming so more people can see it.

A personal 90's movie made in 2022

[thrillerrayne · 9/10 · 27 May 2023]

One of my favorite Director ever is Richard Linklater. And watching this movie gave me vibes of the old Linklater movies. Though, this film is much more concise with an arc.

The movie is split into 3 part with 3 different moods. Begins as a coming of age story. Has the digital noise with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Colors are muted. And i thought at first it was just an artistic choice(being that it takes place in the 90's). However, it plays into the storytelling.

The things we talk about from our childhood after a certain age gets fuzzy. With every emotion turned up. The happy moments seem like the happiest one has ever been. While the sad moments are the worst.

The 2nd third, The colors and contrast changes. The cinematography is cleaner and warmer. But, still the aspect ratio is the same and still feels like 90s film with a slightly bigger budget. And it shows how the age of adolesence is quite a life turning experience. And the risks of escapism.

The final 3rd is much more modern. With a full screen ratio. And beautiful sweeping shots.

All in all. An amazing movie. Very well acted. The emotion is real and each moment with the characters is empathetic. Even some of the side characters are very endearing. A wonderful experience. And i recommend this to any fan of movies.

9/10.

Such a beautiful movie!

[mxcdpwzg · 9/10 · 24 December 2023]

I had to write this review, because I was a bit surprised to read that some reviews said the movie didn't go deep enough? That the movie didn't deliver? This movie was só much better than I expected! I liked the fact that the story was divided in three parts and if you have lived in the nineties, it's nice to recognize the clothes and other small details from that time. The characters were very realistic and very well played! Since I am an andopted Korean living in Europe myself, some of the things the boy did and felt were very recognisable. Although the story contains some really heavy issues, the director succeeds in keeping things 'light' by not overdoing heavy dramatic scenes. Just raw authentic emotions. Some stories inside the story of the movie were pure poetry and full of wisdom. I did cry a couple of times because of the beautiful way the movie shows how we are all connected to our roots.

Well made

[ronrobichaud-34123 · 10/10 · 26 May 2023]

This isn't an action or drama movie. It's a realistic down to earth movie. It's more then just an immigrant family trying to adapt to life in a new country. It goes deeper then that. It's about a Mother's love for her son. It made me reflect back to my childhood and my mother trying to take care of me.

I even got a bit emotional watching this movie and that does not happen much. When the mother has to face the truth about her own mortality she still tries to help her son find his roots and himself.

I enjoyed the music and story line and I would not change one thing about how this movie was made. At first I was not even sure I would like this movie but I was shockingly surprised. I will watch it again.

A gorgeous and hard-hitting film

[gabrielnevada · 10/10 · 9 February 2023]

Not for the faint of heart, Riceboy Sleeps is one of the finest films of the last few years. The coming-of-age story takes on many themes involving race, identity, and family while remaining an incredibly personal and original testament to the experience of an immigrant mother and son. It provides an insight into a world otherwise impossible to fathom. Excellent camera perspectives throughout and beautifully shot, following each character almost too long but with a beautiful intent. The aspect ratio changes several times throughout and appears to be on real film stock, giving marvelous saturation to each scene and the degree of realism is nearly unmatched, but could be likened to films including The Florida Project and Moonlight. It's a very tough and touching movie. I saw this by chance in the Madrid Film Festival and feel so lucky! I would not have known! Shim is a wonderful director and I can't recommend this highly enough.

It's like you are watching clips of someone's memory

[qdliusiwen · 6/10 · 3 March 2023]

Watched it at the Kingston Canadian Film Festival. The movie was made on film so there was a grainy texture, an aged feeling. At times it felt like clips from someone's home video.

There was a lot of subtle humour, beautiful imagery, and endearing cultural input that I was very familiar with.

However, I was disappointed that the movie didn't excite me. Not excitement like joy or thrill. I just felt the movie was one cliche after another. It used a lot of common things that happened to immigrant families that got played out in numerous films already. I wished it had more character exploration and development outside of typical events. When they were so jam packed in a short time period, they didn't seem natural.

However, the film moved away from that in the third act. The ending felt like a breath of fresh air after being stuck in the basement for years.

Too realistic for who's been there

[joisick · 10/10 · 2 January 2024]

I'm glad it wasn't all about immigration and integration. It captures what is being human when others see you as a mere immigrant. The discrimination and integration scenes might seem cliche but that is exactly what I (immigrant child in the 90's) went through. Changing name, food shame, parents views on violence, discipline etc.

When the boy goes to Korea to meet family he suddenly feels comfortable, that side of him that was only revealed at home with his mother now can come out and it's normal.. not something to give up on in the name of "integration". Now the blond hair that was meant to impress a Canadian audience feels dumb, he reaches more clarity with exposure to his roots.

But the story was always about the mother, not her as an immigrant but as a resilient woman that lived with love, never gave up and lived with love. It seems obvious but in all truth we don't give these kind of women enough credit. A simple story with so much depth that all people that have gone through this will know how accurate it is.

OK immigrant story

[chong_an · 7/10 · 14 April 2023]

A single mother and her young son immigrate from Korea to Canada, and she struggles (and reasonably succeeds) in making a new life and adjusting to their new surroundings. The story is told in 3 acts. First is when the son enters Grade 1, second is when he is a teenager in Canada, and third is when she takes him to Korea to learn about his roots.

The director gives memorable sweeping vistas of Korea, as opposed to the more gritty views of life in Canada. But neither country is fully accepting, and it is interesting to see the hypocrisy of a school that tolerates verbal assaults, but has zero tolerance of physical assault. Things do get easier as more immigrants arrive, and life becomes less lonely.

There are interesting vignettes of Korean culture, but they do not seem to drive the plot forward, and there are major loose ends.

A beautiful portrait painted with too shoddy a brush

[DeanAmythe · 6/10 · 22 November 2023]

Stumbles in the same way recent arthouse outputs like 2019's Waves have, where their emotional weight is substantially lessened in their quest for pleasing and/or unique aesthetics. At least in Shults' film, the directorial choices supported the state of the characters, like how the shifts in aspect ratio reflected the isolated or stressed state the leads found themselves in. Riceboy Sleeps has a very particular way of shooting its scenes, with the camera roaming around the place like a third party, a spectator looking in from outside -- which is exactly the issue. Too many interactions fail to pull their clearly intended punch because of the simple fact that the literal distance between the people and the camera also increases the emotional distance. Why are heartfelt moments shot from such a wide angle, so far away? Why don't we linger on Dong-hyun as he experiences a realization, but instead move on to a different corner of a classroom where some teens are messing about? To add editing to the mix, why do we cut away from confronting moments, when those are the exact kind we need to see the immediate reaction to?

It's not just the filmmaking that made this lack resonance, there's also nothing that stands out in the script. The first act is repeating every 'foreign kid in western classroom' trope we've seen countless times now. As a white kid, I'm most definitely not an authoritative figure in this matter, but I would love to see stories add to the conversation or spin it in a new direction, not just endlessly regurgitate it.

Pretty much all that follows adheres to this lack of eagerness to innovate, which is a shame, because there is a very solid emotional core that is sadly not built upon properly. The journey in Korea constitutes a relatively small slice of the whole, even though it is, by far, the most interesting section. It's where the characters get to develop. As it stands, they get a few scenes where what exactly changed is unclear apart from a few new appreciations found by Dyong-hun which apparently satisfy needs he was barely established to have. It all ends with what you'd expect, a moment of catharsis that is clearly meant to be the knockout, the moment to drive you to tears, but it felt utterly empty to me.

Luckily, the visuals do save it from the damage they themselves did -- the whole thing does look neat and has some excellent long takes that really draw you into the conversation -- but a lot of it is carried by sheer acting power, which should never be the case. A performance can be as mighty as can be, but if I feel no connection, watching it is not much different than seeing Daniel Day-Lewis yell at the top of his lungs in a TikTok "best acting ever" compilation.

Reflects many realistic issues new immigrants are facing in Canada but doesn't go deep for any.

[HighlanderABC · 6/10 · 3 October 2023]

It's hard to shrink a life's story into a 2-hour movie. It's even harder to divide that into many different sections such as adapting to life in a country as a new immigrant, relationship between parents and children, overcoming obstacles including discrimination and hypocrisy of the social norm, forging friendship and love, sudden discovery of a terminal disease, and making amends with past losses before the imminent end. These are all the topics that the movie tried to cover. And naturally as a result, one can only scratch the surface of every issue instead of digging deep into any. That is the impression I got after watching this movie. It does reflect many realistic issues new immigrants are facing in Canada but just doesn't feel that it goes deep enough to offer a good solution or good ending for any of them. I guess that's life.

between two worlds

[dromasca · 7/10 · 10 February 2024]

The name of Canadian Anthony Shim is to be added to the permanently increasing list of actors who have crossed over from the other side of the camera to become film directors. As an actor, he has quite an impressive filmography, with over 40 roles in short and feature films, for the big screen and for television. 'Riceboy Sleeps' is his second feature film, an auteur film. Shim is the writer, director and plays one of the important supporting roles. It is also a personal film, inspired by his own life experience and that of his family.

Immigration dramas are a genre that has produced some outstanding North American films in recent years. 'Riceboy Sleeps' brings to the screen the story of So-Young, a single mother who immigrated to Canada in 1990 with her boy, Dong-Hyun, who is in the first grades of elementary school. She had left behind a tragedy in South Korea - her husband, who had returned traumatized from the army, had committed suicide. Ahead of her are hopes for a better life in a country considered quite friendly to immigrants. However, problems are not lacking here either, and in order to reach a stable economic situation and social integration, So-Young has to face the typical problems of immigrants: the language barrier, cultural differences, visible and invisible prejudices, to which is added the vulgar misogyny of some of the men towards a lonely and vulnerable woman. The confrontations are described with sensitivity and realism in the first part of the film, with some moments of beautiful cinematography, without idealizing or dramatizing the situations. The second part takes place nine years later. Dong-Hyun has turned from a timorated child into a seemingly assimilated teenager, with the problems and experiences of his age. He speaks perfect English, a language he prefers to speak at home as well, while his mother answers him in Korean and sometimes needs a dictionary in her daily life. Many of those who have lived the experience of emigrating in families with children will recognize the situations. So-Young has not remarried, and when a man comes into her life, she hesitates whether to expand her family. Dong-Hyun starts asking questions about his father and his family in Korea. The events will lead to a journey of the two to Korea, looking for family and roots, but their experience with meeting the family left behind is not smooth either. A chasm may have narrowed on one side, toward the new world the family now lives in, but another opened toward the world from which they had come.

Anthony Shim captured, I think, very well the psychology of the first generation of emigrants, of those who live between two worlds without fully belonging to either of them. The story is well supported by the performances of the three actors who bring the two characters to the screen: Choi Seung-yoon as So-Young, the amazing Dohyun Noel Hwang as the child Dong-Hyun and Ethan Hwang as the adolescent Dong-Hyun. The director uses different screen formats for the parts shot in Canada and South Korea, respectively. The narration is cursive and efficient, the film is sensitive and genuine, but it lacks an element of drama or surprise to make it memorable. Anthony Shim demonstrated his talent and mastery of the director's tools in this film with an obvious personal involvement. He now needs to confirm these skills in future films.

A thoughtfully crafted, sensitive drama

[steveinadelaide · 7/10 · 11 February 2024]

Riceboy Sleeps, a film featuring So Young (Choi Seung-yoon) and her adolescent son, Dong Hyun (Ethan Hwang), elegantly portrays the challenges and triumphs associated with immigration. The narrative unfolds as So Young, a single mother, relocates to Canada in the 1990s, seeking a brighter future for herself and her son. However, racial discrimination, cultural conflicts, and personal hardships mar their journey. The escalating tensions in their relationship reach a pivotal moment, prompting a confrontation with their past and a quest for mutual understanding and healing.

While I perceive the portrayal as authentic, it is those who have endured similar experiences who can best attest to its veracity. The performances by the lead actors are compelling, effectively capturing the nuances of cultural identity and the dynamics of a mother-son relationship. Riceboy Sleeps is characterised by its prolonged shots and visually arresting scenes, fostering a contemplative viewing experience. The film delves into themes of identity, loss, and family dynamics, universal aspects of the human experience.

Despite receiving acclaim and numerous accolades, Riceboy Sleeps may not resonate with all audiences. The director's methodical storytelling approach may not appeal to some viewers, and the film's ambiguous ending could be a source of discontent for others. The movie's emphasis on subdued emotions and nonverbal communication might pose interpretative challenges.

It is important to note that Riceboy Sleeps is not a conventionally entertaining film. However, those seeking a thoughtfully crafted drama will appreciate its sensitive portrayal of the immigrant experience, the excellence of the performances, and the film's visually stunning cinematography.