Final Rating: 1.5/5
There has been a great explosion in the last few years of finally allowing Asian filmmakers the opportunity to tell their own stories and to give leading roles to Asian actors who too often were sidelined. Seagrass is a semi-autobiographical movie from director Meredith Hama-Brown. Judith, a Japanese-Canadian woman (played by Ally Maki), brings her family to group therapy camp so she can work on her strained relationship with her Caucasian husband Steve (Luke Roberts). Steve is your typical man, he doesn’t like having feelings and won’t admit to any flaws he might have. During therapy sessions he does the motions required, but never taps into anything deep or meaningful. The couple also bring their two young daughters, Stephanie and Emmy along where they spend their days trying to fit in with the other kids at the retreat but often fall victim to racism from them.
The film tries to tell a unique and personal story of a mixed-race family struggling to fit in and reconcile their pasts in the 1990’s when casual racism was more common. Unfortunately the characters follow welltread emotional beats with predictable responses and don’t offer anything new. Judith and Steve’s storyline is paralleled by Carol and Pat, another interracial couple played by Sarah Gadon and Chris Pang, who are also at the therapy retreat.
Steve is completely by the numbers. He seems like a nice, supporting husband who says all the right things. But very early on he shows how little he wants to be in therapy. In an exercise where Judith holds a mirror up to his face and Steve must describe what he sees, his only responses are adjectives like “stability, determination and driven”. In another session we see Pat punching pillows and letting out his pent up rage, when it is Steve’s turn to let loose he can only muster a few weak yelps before giving up and storming out of the session.
We also learn early on, that Steve carries a lot of casual racism with him as he assumes the fact that Pat has a fancy sports car it must be because he is compensating for having a small penis, he calls Pat Jackie Chan in a derogatory way and in a big blow out fight with Judith, she calls him out on his racism he responds by saying he is married to an Asian woman, so how can he be racist.
Steve gets his moments to show off by fixing a closet door that his daughters broke and he finally engages in the therapy session after Judith is too hungover and frustrated to attend. This doesn’t make up for the fact that he is constantly undermining their relationship and refuses to stand in solidarity with Judith when needing to discipline their children.
Pat as a character seems to only exist to work in stereotypes as a polar opposite to Steve. Pat is everything that Steve is not, he’s a supportive husband to Carol, he actively participates in the therapy sessions and makes himself vulnerable, he loves to travel, all things that Judith wishes her husband was. We get several scenes of chemistry between Judith and Pat as you are forced to imagine that this nice guy would be a better partner for Judith because they both are of Asian descent. Moments of Judith drying off Pat after a rainstorm piles on the romantic overtones, asking the audience to cheer on potential infidelity. These flirtatious scenes undermine that Pat is devoted to Carol and that is one of the things Judith most wishes Steve was like.
Casting celebrated actor Sarah Gadon, who has turned in phenomenal performances in films such as Enemy, Black Bear and All My Puny Sorrows seems utterly wasted in this role. She shows up in the background of the therapy scenes and we are supposed to believe she may have chemistry with Steve to help offset the imagined coupling of Judith and Pat. Her biggest scene involves making Judith feel bad about being a mother and to help her realize that Judith can be unhappy for no particular reason, not exactly a groundbreaking discovery. It feels odd having an actor of Gadon’s caliber relegated to the fourth most interesting person in every scene she is in.
Ally Maki turns in a fine performance as Judith, but when the narrative beats are telegraphed so far in advance it is hard to take her character seriously. We watch as she struggles to be a mother, something she was unsure of that she’s good at. She gets frustrated with her boring white bread husband and is attracted to the worldly perfect other man. It is tough to critique some of her experiences with growing up Japanese in Canada as it is unknown how many of the anecdotes were pulled from Meredith Hama-Brown’s own life. It is true that a lot of cultural practices were dropped and forgotten when Japanese people were rounded up and forced into internment camps for four years during World War II, thus never being passed on. It just unfortunately seemed like Judith’s entire persona was someone who not only was deprived of learning about her family’s history, but that she willingly didn’t want to learn either.
The best part of the film is the youngest daughter Emmy seems to be followed by an apparition. The family attends this retreat mostly due to the struggles that Judith has experienced since her mother passed away a few months earlier. Emmy is susceptible to supernatural beliefs that other kids tell her and when she is left alone, these fears seem to manifest themselves. We get beautiful handheld tracking shots where the camera floats around like a spectral, eventually tracking Emmy. At first you are left to wonder if this is something haunted and insidious, or all inside the young girl’s head. The more these oddly hypnotic camera movements appear, the more you assume it is likely her Grandmother’s spirit, not haunting, but guiding her. Emmy runs away at one point after being yelled at by her mother and the same floating camera movements begin to follow the other daughter Stephanie around, which helps her find her lost sister.
The film tries to deal with racism, family trauma, interracial marriages, understanding self worth and happiness and more but unfortunately it all feels quite clumsy and by the numbers. There are superior films that deal with similar subject matters including Minari and Riceboy Sleeps, both films that also take place in the past using the directors lives as a jumping off point to tell their stories. Seagrass is beautifully shot and makes great use of Gabriola Island, British Columbia with its ocean views and intimidating rock structures. It’s a promising film that unfortunately doesn’t add up.
Seagrass was seen during the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Thank you to Pender PR for the screener.
