The Motel, directed and written by Michael Kang, is reminiscent of such films as Carwash (1976), where a parade of humanity’s oddballs contradict the fantasy that everyone is normal and proper. The plot, based on the novel Waylaid (2002) by Ed Lin, revolves around a dysfunctional Chinese family, consisting of a senile grandfather, Gung Gung (played by Stephen Chen), a controlling mother, Ahma (played by Jade Wu), a spoiled sister, Katie (played by Alexis Kapp Chang), and with most attention directed at chubby thirteen-year-old Ernest Chin (played by Jeffrey Chyau). The family owns a rundown motel for quickies in an isolated rural location outside Las Vegas. The father of the family left one day, and Ernest is assigned the hard labor of cleaning vacated motel rooms and answering night callers while the rest do much lighter work. Indeed, Ernest feels abused by almost everyone except for his grandfather and records his frustrations within a composition handwritten in a school bluebook, entitled “The Motel,” which wins honorable mention at his school but a derisive comment from his mother, who refuses to read the theme. One of the teenage motel visitors even bullies Ernest. However, handsome and masculine twentysomething Sam Kim (played by Sung Kang) dominates the story with his antics. His wife kicked him out with meager financial resources, and he is staying at the motel without paying, though he has nightly encounters with prostitutes. Ernest must clean up after the messy affairs each day. Hoping to cultivate Ernest’s dependency on him, Sam tries several ploys--baseball practice, getting Ernest to drive a car, secret food feeding, fatherly advice, hinting that he will provide a woman for Ernest to fuck, and efforts to compliment Ernest for being “all right” after probing to see whether he is gay. The intensity of his effort to befriend Ernest suggests that Sam wants Ernest to service him sexually, but he makes no advances. Instead, Ernest is emboldened to make passes at two girls, one an employee of the motel’s restaurant. Ultimately, Mrs. Chin insists that Ernest must evict Sam. While he does so, she reads his composition. When the deed is done, mother and son confront each other in the final scene. While tears flow down Ernest’s eyes because he has evicted his only friend, his mother stares at him, evidently realizing for the first time that he is a human being, not just a slave, with deep frustrations due to her mistreatment. The Motel is a coming-of-age story for both mother and son, though the outcome awaits a sequel. MH
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