A flawed but heartfelt satire of the toxic allure of whiteness.
There are a million different entry points for how to explore the immigrant experience, perhaps one for every person who has faced it. The question of assimilation, of where one’s identity lies, is at the heart of the many of them. And sometimes the answer may seem be as simple as if you can’t beat them, become them.
This is central premise of Slanted, the new surreal comedy from debut director-writer Amy Wang. On a conceptual level, Slanted can be described as Mean Girls meets Sorry to Bother You. (Wang explicitly names Boots Riley as influence.) It is a prefoundly personal film, exploring concepts of identity and place, but wraps it in familiar but amusing satirical sci-fi tropes. Despite being a very clear first effort from a new director establishing her voice, there are glimmers of passion and promise there that make it an intriguing introduction.
Shirley Chen plays Joan Huang, who along with her parents immigrated to an unnamed small town USA at 10-years-old. Immediately obsessed with the concept of the Prom Queen, she dedicated herself to mesh into her predominantly white suburban community. But her race remains a barrier between her and her peers.
That is until she discovered Ethnos Inc., a mysterious medical company that promises to find equality by erasing race, allowing people of color to transform into white people. Joan jumps at the chance, becoming her alternate self of Jo Hunt (McKenna Grace) and exploring the other side of the racial divide.
The heart of Slanted is a very pointed, cynical skewering of American culture. The mascot for Joan’s school is the Wizards, but the iconography is clearly a Klansman. Every store front is more preposterously patriotic than the last. Even the offices of Ethnos clearly draws from the iconography of high end self-help clinics, a literal magical passageway into the safety of whiteness.
None of this is subtle, but that isn’t necessarily a problem. The issue more lies in how Wang’s sense of humor never fully settles, and the jokes feel more like broad, barbed commentary in search of a place to land. The high school comedy side especially falls flat, seeming more like a pretense for displaying more hyperbolic versions of white supremacist brainwashing.
The heart of Slanted however lies in the family dynamics. Vivian Wu and Feng Du play Joan’s parents, who have a more assured sense of self due to having settled into their identity before immigrating. Their responses to Joan’s sense of otherness speaks to a generational divide, as well as what precisely their new home means to them.
And it is that heart that makes the whole affair elevate above its uneven whole. It has a lot on its mind, and sometimes it communicates those things in ways that feel fundamentally first draft. But it’s earnestness forgives much of that, as Wang clearly bears much of herself in Joan’s journey.
