‘Slanted’s’ barbed satire goes beyond skin deep
Many will disagree, but there is such a thing as white privilege, evident from the courtroom to the boardroom, especially if you’re blonde and blue-eyed. Knowledge of this becomes essential to just about every immigrant child assimilating to the United States, where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness can be as elusive as a Chinese girl’s dream of becoming a prom queen.
That’s the intriguing setup in “Slanted,” the debut feature from Amy Wang, a writer-director who draws on her own experiences growing up in Australia, a country not unlike the U.S., where adapting to a predominantly white, Christian culture is easier said than done. In fact, it can be a living hell. Just ask Joan Huang, the prepubescent protagonist in Wang’s body-horror parable, in which Joan makes a deal, not with the devil, but a quack doctor promising to make her look white.
If you’ve seen “The Substance,” you’ll have a pretty solid idea of where the story is headed, because the overnight process developed by Dr. Willie Singer (R. Keith Harris) is not without its horrifying side effects. It just takes a while for them to appear, usually at the most inopportune times, as is the case for Joan, played by Shirley Chen (“Didi”) in Asian form and by Mckenna Grace (“Scream 7”) as the blonde-blue-eyed version she magically transforms into.
The outline for Wang’s sci-fi allegory adheres closely to the plethora of body swap comedies from the 1980s and ’90s, like “Big” and “Freaky Friday,” but with the added depth of exploring how being white not only makes you more popular with your peers, it also makes you less fearful and more apt to draw a welcome smile from passersby instead of suspicious stares. It also lands you the cutest guy in school. Might prom queen be next?
If it happens, it will be the culmination of a dream Joan has held since she was a little girl (Kristen Ciu), wandering into the prom at the school where her non-English-speaking dad (Fang Du) serves as custodian. But the chances are looking remote as she enters high school, where the halls are lined with the portraits of every past prom queen, all of them fair-haired and lightly complected. Just like Joan’s idols (Taylor Swift and Sabrena Carpenter, et al.), whose white faces conspicuously comprise an expansive collage on her bedroom wall.
One thing in Joan’s favor is her new transactional friendship with Olivia Hammond (Amelie Zilber), the queen bee of the most sought-after clique. So, what if she’s just using the Mandarin-speaking Joan to translate her instructions to the Chinese ladies at the local nail salon? It’s a start. It also helps trigger a twist of fate that accidentally lands Joan on the doorstep of Ethnos Inc., the popular racial conversion emporium run by the jovial Dr. Singer, who, like Sy Sperling, isn’t just the president, he’s also a client. The only catch with the procedure is that there are no refunds or reversals after it’s complete.
A new face and body also require a new identity, at least at school, where the metamorphosed Joan passes herself off as Jo Hunt, the daughter of a Hollywood movie producer in town scouting locations. And this is where “Slanted” starts to run into trouble by amassing way too many plot holes. Like, for instance, why doesn’t anyone – including the teachers – notice that Joan is no longer in class? And how did Joan pay for her makeover when her dad and mom (Vivian Wu) can barely keep food on the table?
It gets to be a bit much, a liability intensified by Wang’s odd choice to switch from a sharp satire on the effects of Madison Avenue dictates concerning “beauty” to sappy moralizing about identity and loyalty to your true friends. In Joan’s case, her BFF Brindha (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, excellent), whom she ghosts to protect her revamped persona following the makeover. Again, we’re to believe Brindha never once inquires about Joan’s whereabouts?
The humor, though, is spot on, as Wang uses her film to poke fun at the superficiality of many of today’s teens, compelled to cultivate an image instead of just being themselves. I really enjoyed the ritualistic way Olivia and her sychophantic followers prepare and consume their daily salads as if it were an ROTC drill. And the initial reactions of Joan’s parents after she surreptitiously morphs into Jo are priceless. Yet, you also palpably perceive the hurt from their daughter effacing their race and heritage.
Yes, the bones of what’s here have been recycled from “Mean Girls,” “Watermelon Man,” “Black Like Me” and, of course, “The Substance.” But there’s just enough originality to stand on its own, evidenced by “Slanted” winning last year’s SXSW Film Festival. You just wish Wang had dug a bit deeper under the skin to flesh out the difficulty of adapting to a new culture without sacrificing your sense of self. Especially when it’s a child, unaware that the onus to change is not on you. Rather, it’s on the palefaces with the “slanted” brains, woefully blind to a wonderful world of color.
Movie review
Slanted
Rated: R for some sexual material, bloody images, language, brief violent content and teen drug use
Cast: McKenna Grace, Shirley Chen, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Amelie Zilber, R. Keith Harris, Fang Du and Vivian Wu.
Director: Amy Wang
Writer: Amy Wang
Runtime: 100 minutes
Where: In theaters March 13 (limited)
Grade: B
