It’s become something of a movie fashion to forestall the title credits until well after an establishing sequence, if not deeper into the film. But when the title appears onscreen in , at the half-hour point, there’s nothing self-consciously stylish about it: It marks a dramatic, ground-shifting change in perspective, a gut-punch of a narrative fracture, and one that writer-director Constance Tsang executes with assurance. At the helm of her first feature, Tsang has made a sharp and tender story about dislocation, centering on a trio of hardworking Chinese immigrants in New York.
In the movie’s first 30 minutes, Tsang draws us into the intimate orbit of her expatriate characters: a construction company employee and two colleagues at a massage parlor. Then, the sudden absence of one of them sets everything askew. Absence is the current that drives the narrative: absence from family, from homeland, from purpose.
The world these characters inhabit, within an enclave of Flushing, Queens, is a place of in-between, captured in the evocative half-light of Norm Li’s cinematography, suggesting the cool-hot glow of the title’s blue sun. The poignant chords of Sami Jano’s elegantly lean score further fuel the angsty mood. The Blue Sun Palace is a restaurant outside the movie’s main New York setting, making its appearance late in the proceedings.
It’s in another, unnamed restaurant that the film kicks off, without ceremony, in a remarkable sequence. The eatery itself is b.
