Photo via Focus Features
Blue Bayou
Antonio LeBlanc is facing trouble. With a child on the way, he’s turned down when applying for a job in the field he knows best, motorcycle repair. It’s his criminal record. And despite his Louisiana-sounding name, Antonio LeBlanc is a Korean immigrant. He’s lived in the U.S. since age three but his foster parents didn’t fill out all the paperwork. He’s considered illegal and a random arrest puts him in ICE’s hands.
Justin Chon wrote, directed and stars as Antonio in Blue Bayou. The film works best in its small moments, including the opening scene when an unseen business owner asks Antonio, “How’d you get a name like that?” Antonio forces a smile, but desperation grows evident behind his Southern politeness. His criminal convictions were years ago, were nonviolent. “If you give me a chance, I could be an asset to your workplace…” he begs to no avail.
Alicia Vikander gives a remarkable performance as Antonio’s wife Kathy, a compassionate and resilient woman, forbearing but no fool. She’s got an angry ex-husband, a New Orleans cop, Ace (Mark O’Brien), who wants joint custody of their daughter, Jessie (Sydney Kowalski). Antonio is a loving stepdad; Jessie knows this but is already jealous of her unborn sister, anxious of losing part of her parents’ affection. Kathy’s mother disapproves of Antonio. Blue Bayou’s family story is well drawn and well-acted.
The movie’s rapid pace slows when Antonio forms an unlikely friendship with Parker (Lin Dan Pham), who left Vietnam with the boat people in the ‘70s and is dying of cancer. As a refugee, she found her path to citizenship in contrast to Antonio, who faces deportation to a country he never knew. Korean isn’t in his vocabulary.
Blue Bayou’s release couldn’t have been timed better to coincide with the arrival of a new cohort of refugees—American allies like Parker’s family—and the deportation of migrants to a country they no longer know. Antonio can be seen as a stand-in for the DACA “Dreamers” brought to the U.S. as children. Like them, Antonio considers himself American but the system doesn’t agree.
Blue Bayou reflects the low-prospect reality of many Americans, documented or not, living in houses as small as their salaries. Nothing, not even the vending machines, work right. But the plotline gets tangled up in unrealistic subplots and gets some things wrong. Memo to screenwriters: state courts do not hear deportation cases as shown in Blue Bayou. No, not even in Louisiana. The director is mistaken to think that melodrama is necessary to make his point—do we really need the sad violins to tell us how we feel when we learn that “ICE took him”—when his point is clear enough. The drama of being poor and being deported requires no string section.
Blue Bayou is screening at the Downer Theater.
