“They say innovation was born of desperation.”
“They were poor too, huh?”
The struggles of immigrant families are at once well known and oft-overlooked. The pressures that first and second generation Americans feel to help their families overcome the hardships of vying for their slice of the pie are intense and manifold, constantly presenting obstacles that can alter the trajectory of their lives. Take Out Girl, a charming indie film fresh off the festival circuit directed by Hisonni Johnson and co-written by Johnson and actress Hedy Wong takes a look at one such story.
Our “take out girl” is Tera Wong (Hedy Wong), a 20-year-old Cantonese-American girl from South Los Angeles born to single mother Wavy (Lynna Yee). Tera drops out of college to help work at her mother’s struggling restaurant along with her brother Saren (Lorin Alond Ly) and cousin Crystal (Mier Chasin). As her mother suffers from an increasingly debilitating back injury, Tera makes a fateful delivery and meets local drug king Lalo (Ski Carr), providing the opportunity to parlay her Chinese food delivery job at the restaurant into a drug hustle to help her family. But soon after, Tera finds herself in the middle of a clash that will challenge ever corner of her family.
Take Out Girl is in part an exploration of the burden faced by the children of immigrants. When we meet Tera, she is making the difficult decision to drop out of college in order to help her ailing mother’s restaurant business; a gut wrenching choice that poor and disadvantaged people often face. Tara feels the need to put her own well-being on the back burner in order to help out her mother and she is not alone as both Crystal and Saren sacrifice in their own way to help support the family and Wavy’s restaurant. The pressure the younger Wong kids put on themselves to ensure the survival of their family will be familiar to those in the viewing audience who come from immigrant families working to carve out a place for themselves within the American dream. Having to cut corners to make ends meet, putting off medical care to avoid adding onto the pile of bills that already exists, these are the complications faced by the youth we now call Dreamers. Take Out Girl makes the reality they face plain and real for the audience, presenting an authentic portrayal of their experiences.
Take Out Girl’s cast is comprised of lesser known actors that display talents accentuating the material they’re given. Co-writer and lead actress Hedy Wong’s performance comes across a bit stilted in parts at the film’s onset, but once it reaches it’s more emotional, climactic moments, her level of performance rises to meet them. Wong is very good during both confrontation scenes with Lynna Yee and Lorin Alond Ly near the film’s end as well as the moment following when she shares an emotional moment in the parking lot with love interest Nate (Dijon Talton). Yee also shines as the sweet, caring matriarch who works hard to provide what she can for her struggling family. Her acting allows for the care and concern shown for her by her children and niece to also be felt by the audience. Ski Carr’s performance as the stoic and intense Lalo must also be noted as Carr does a great job in portraying the character’s viciousness as something you can feel is there just bubbling beneath the surface, but being held back by the drug boss as he tends to his business.
Director Hisonni Johnson must be commended for the many hats he wore in the production of this film. As producer, co-writer, co-director of photography, and visual effects supervisor, in addition to his directorial duties, nearly every part of the onscreen product can be laid at his feet and he delivers strongly in all facets. Johnson does well in depicting LA’s diverse communities and imparting an authentic feel within the film. While the attempt at using music was a major component of this strategy, and somewhat appreciated, it was so frequent that it began to feel over done by the time we got two-thirds of the way through the film. Take Out Girl features one of the better executed twists in quite a while for which Johnson and Hedy Wong in her role as co-writer must be applauded. Coupled with Wong’s strong performance as lead, Take Out Girl represents her bold next step toward notoriety as much as Johnson’s.
