“Smoking Tigers” is about liminal spaces. The spaces in between.
Between American and Korean. Rich and poor. Mom and Dad. In and out.
A lonely Korean-American teenage girl enrolls in a test prep bootcamp, where she befriends wealthy in-crowd students. She’s not like the other students; she’s from much more modest means. Despite this, her Mom shells out for the program – nothing is more important to her than her daughter getting into an elite college. Her father, on the other hand, is more aloof. They’re divorced. He’s in and out of the picture.
The film premiered at Tribeca Film Festival, and is the feature directorial debut from So Young Shelly Yo.
Much of the movie is spent in these in between places: hallways, unfurnished rooms, dark nondescript outdoor spaces. And in between languages, going back and forth from Korean to English.
Like many a high school protagonist, this one doesn’t quite fit in. She lives in those spaces. And “Smoking Tigers” invites us in with her.
The film invites us to feel the loneliness of being somewhere and nowhere at the same time. We get the feeling that it’s not that we don’t belong here. We belong nowhere.
In these spaces are quiet conversations and quiet moments. It’s uncomfortably dark and quiet and joyless. And the movie does a good job putting us in that headspace. But it never lets us out. Doesn’t give us a big, loud moment. Or take us to someplace fun. I was wanting that breath of fresh air, but never got it. “Smoking Tigers” is a bleak time. And if that’s not your thing, steer clear, because you’re trapped.
It was missing those profound and moving moments. But maybe that’s the point. These liminal spaces aren’t the place for those types of moments. You’re stuck in neutral. You’re not making big strides one way or the other. And those story inflection points, that felt slight to me, in a liminal space, maybe, they are big time. Ultimately, though, I wasn’t moved. But those with sensibilities more attuned to these quiet, awkward, uneventful, dimly lit places may very well be.
The screening was presented by the AT&T Presents: Untold Stories. “Smoking Tigers,” is the first ‘Untold Stories’ film to make it the festival’s U.S. Narrative Competition.
