Half-Life

D: Jennifer Phang; with Sanoe Lake, Julia Nickson, Leonardo Nam, Alexander Agate

Half-Life, the debut feature from writer-director Jennifer Phang, pairs the tense relationships of a suburban Asian-American family with the specter of global environmental devastation, creating a world in which violence and destruction seem to forebode individual crisis. Timothy Wu (Agate) and his older sister (Lake) watch in quiet anger as their mother (Nickson) falls apart while attempting to face the reality that their father has abandoned them. With each familial confrontation comes another (often heavy-handed) reminder of violence in the Middle East or environmental catastrophe. Citizens must keep pets indoors. Warmer waters brought disastrous numbers of jellyfish into coastal areas. A local man drove a chainsaw through his skull. It’s unclear, however, what Phang’s ominous undercurrent is suggesting; it seems she wants the viewer to escape the duress through imagination. A good idea, but in the end the apocalyptic atmosphere, timely and true as it is, proves a distraction from the immediate, even poetic, challenges of the Wu family.

This article appears in March 14 • 2008.

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