Randall Park, US 2023

“We finally made a movie for the flawed complicated Asians. If you’re not flawed this movie isn’t for you.” The packed theatre in Chelsea erupted in laughter and applause at hearing these words spoken by director Randall Park, introducing his film SHORTCOMINGS at a public screening at the Tribeca Film Festival. It was the perfect way to describe this bitingly funny and painfully real romantic comedy featuring a young couple living in L.A., who are struggling to navigate their relationship amidst personal changes. Based on an acclaimed graphic novel by Adrien Tomine, who also wrote the screenplay, Park deftly adapts this story into a compelling narrative that lets its characters be perfectly flawed. This film features a stellar primarily Asian cast in Justin H. Min (AFTER YANG), Ally Maki (Hacks), and Sherry Cola (JOY RIDE), and a lot of its humor speaks to the Asian-American experience; but SHORTCOMINGS’ universal themes of love, friendship, pursuing your dreams, and making mistakes are concepts that any audience can relate to.

The film focuses mainly on Ben (Min), who is a Japanese-American filmmaker, living in southern California and running a rather unsuccessful arthouse movie theater as his day job. He’s the type of character who thumbs his nose at mainstream blockbuster films and will point out any flaw he sees, but refuses to look inward. He’s arrogant and infuriating, which the film fully embraces. Ben is an antihero and Justin H. Min plays him with such care and nuance, that we can’t help but be charmed by his abrasive wit, while also wanting to throw a shoe at him. Ben is in a relationship with Miko (Maki), a writer, who’s a smart and driven woman looking for a deeper sense of belonging and purpose. She needs a break from Ben, so Miko moves to New York for an internship putting the relationship on hold. Ben is left to contemplate his sense of identity as he pursues other women and defends his choices to his best friend Alice (Cola). Alice is the true heart of this film, as she doesn’t shy away from serving Ben some hard truths while simultaneously using him as her fake boyfriend in front of her family, who do not know she’s gay. The film does include some romantic comedy tropes but packages them in a way that doesn’t feel too saccharine because the characters themselves feel so grounded in reality. When Ben decides to go to New York to pursue Miko, Randall Park expertly subverts the audience’s expectations and offers a refreshing look at the “I’m-going-to-win-her-back” narrative so often overused in these types of films. The ending of this film is complicated. It is not the type of movie that will leave you crying with tears of joy, and if it was that would feel false. The feeling SHORTCOMINGS leaves you with is much more complicated, but it rings true because the film serves the characters and not the audience. Park and Tomine aren’t afraid to show you their characters’ honest selves, warts and all, and that fearlessness is what makes this film a success. (KL)