White-Vietnamese couple in new film “Little Fish”
CVK
(Thanks to Angry Asian Man for this!) Australian film Little Fish opened today. The movie stars Cate Blanchett as Tracy Heart, a 32-year-old recovering drug addict who manages a video store in Cabramatta, a Sydney suburb nicknamed Little Saigon for its large Vietnamese population and known as the heroin capital of Australia. Here’s a shocker: her boyfriend in the film is Vietnamese. He’s played by Dustin Nguyen, of 21 Jump Street Fame. From the New York Times review:
Four years earlier, Tracy’s brother Ray (Martin Henderson) lost part of a leg in a car crash in a vehicle driven by her ex-boyfriend Jonny Nguyen (Dustin Nguyen), a slick, seductive dealer and user who returns from a four-year exile in Vancouver claiming to have cleaned up his act and landed a job as a stockbroker for a Sydney bank. Emotional alarms go off when he drops in on Tracy, who lives with her fiercely protective single mother, Janelle (Noni Hazlehurst). But the old romantic spark between them reignites, and against her better judgment Tracy sleeps with Jonny.
Anonymous wrote:
I want to see this because Dustin Nguyen is usually cast as the “nice guy”.
He was a fun villain in The Highlander series (actually he was on two episodes playing two unrelated characters).
Posted 28 Feb 2006 at 1:49 pm ¶
Meg wrote:
i saw this a while ago, from memory it doesn’t dwell on the inter-racial relationship, more of a focus on characters’ relationships generally. possibly a non-aussie audience would look at the film differently to how i see it. only thing i could see infused into it that’s of a racial nature is the association of vietnamese with heroin - but that’s a stretch.
i’m not a movie critic but - great film, worth the watch just to see some aussie actors using their real accents.
Posted 01 Mar 2006 at 3:05 am ¶
Anonymous wrote:
Meg-
I thought IR relationships/minority representation was a probelm on aussie T.V./film?
Posted 01 Mar 2006 at 5:55 pm ¶
Meg wrote:
anonymous - not so sure what you’re getting at and it depends what you mean by ‘problem.’ there aren’t a lot of IR relationships shown on oz tv and not a lot of ‘minorities’ unless you watch a certain channel. Is that a problem yes. In this film the fact that the relationship is IR is unusual for oz film/tv generally BUT not for the type of story that’s being told. the film focuses on a part of sydney which is thought of as an asian area so the interracial relationship shouldn’t surprise.
Posted 02 Mar 2006 at 3:53 am ¶
justin wrote:
I saw the Australian news coverage/publicity and read the reviews after it was released. The impression I got was that the interracial thing was over emphasised because people were so interested in Dustin Nguyen.
Even if the movie isn’t about the relationship, if the movie is good (in this case) the outcome is good. I don’t care for neutral depictions. Depictions should be many and varied, representations of asian men with white women are neither.
This is going to sound paranoid but, a man named Van Tong Nguyen was executed in Singapore. He was used by the Australian media as an anecdote or antidote to xenophobic news coverage/public reaction to the arrest of Schapple Corby in Bali. So there is this very suspect enfranchising of the Vietnamese in Australia recently.
Posted 02 Mar 2006 at 9:24 am ¶
Anonymous wrote:
Dustin’s in a movie with… (long pause)
CATE BLANCHETT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted 03 Mar 2006 at 12:02 am ¶
justin wrote:
Within Australia, I believe, Dustin Nguyen is more interesting or more of a novelty than boring old local girl Cate Blanchett.
The Movie also has Sam Neil and Hugo (Agent Smith) Weaving. Some countries take their actors for granted.
Posted 03 Mar 2006 at 10:13 am ¶
John wrote:
I always thought Dustin was cool.
Finally- a Jump Street kid, other than Jonny Depp, gets a cool movie gig.
And how can anyone take Cate Blanchett for granted?!
Posted 04 Mar 2006 at 12:47 am ¶
justin wrote:
All the publicity that I saw before the movies release was all about Dustin Nguyen, even though Cate Blanchetts character is the central one.
Posted 04 Mar 2006 at 7:39 am ¶
Engelhardt wrote:
^Was that strange to see?
Years ago, Levis Jeans made a big announcement. They just completed a ground breaking commercial (before Hollywood started ripping off Hong Kong action movies) with Levis’ first Asian male spokesperson, Dustin Nguyen.
It was indeed cool! Too bad Levis decided it was too cool for the US and reserved Dustin’s commercial for the Euro markets.
http://h.t.ioki.tripod.com/Archive/Gallery/Levis.htm
Posted 06 Mar 2006 at 12:48 am ¶
soulman wrote:
It was good to see a movie with real asian male characters instead of stereotypes. A hollywood studio would never make this kind of movie.
Posted 13 Apr 2006 at 3:49 pm ¶
Anonymous wrote:
play it
Posted 14 May 2006 at 10:23 pm ¶